By Christopher Mims
In a sometimes-heated hearing in Washington last April, 55 U.S.
representatives questioned Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark
Zuckerberg about privacy concerns and leaked user data. In the week
before the U.S. midterm elections, about two-thirds of those same
representatives are spending campaign dollars advertising on
Facebook.
Politicians' enthusiasm for targeting potential voters and
donors on Facebook cuts across party lines -- as did their
criticisms. Paul Tonko, a Democrat, told Mr. Zuckerberg at the
time, "Users trusted Facebook to prioritize user privacy and data
security, and that trust has been shattered." Republican Tim
Walberg expressed concern that Facebook was banning political
content and advertising based on the views expressed in it.
Campaigns for both have subsequently sunk money into Facebook
advertising, according to a tool Facebook recently released that
allows anyone to look up ads for political campaigns and "issues of
national importance." Neither congressman's campaign replied to
requests for comment.
Rep. Greg Walden (R., Ore.), who ran the hearing before the
House Energy and Commerce Committee, has placed hundreds of ads on
Facebook since April, when Facebook's database of political
advertising begins. "Greg Walden reaches voters in Oregon's Second
District across all mediums. That includes connecting to voters
online, on social-media platforms, and via radio, television, and
print newspapers," says a spokesman for his campaign.
That few politicians feel they can escape the necessity of
advertising on Facebook is precisely why we need to contemplate its
ever-growing scale, revenue and power. The ramp-up in political
spending across Facebook's social networks, which also include
Instagram, is breathtaking: In 2014, digital ad spending was 1% of
all political ad spending. Now it's 22%, or about $1.9 billion,
according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Facebook says that politicians have spent nearly $300 million in
the U.S. on Facebook ads since May. As of Oct. 30, Democrats were
outspending Republicans on Facebook 3 to 1.
Politicians who want to reach the same voters their competitors
are reaching on Facebook have little choice but to go there, too.
That's despite mounting criticism that Facebook's algorithms are
actually driving increased political polarization and concerns that
the site serves as a vector for influence campaigns by Russia and
now Iran. Facebook, a driver of our fractious political debate, can
be seen as profiting from the fallout.
Giving Facebook money to target voters has become a
collective-action problem, much like campaign-finance sore spots:
Politicians on both sides of the aisle may wish to reduce the
influence of Facebook in U.S. elections, but few are incentivized
to act on that wish.
Targeting Voters
In the last midterm election season, sophisticated targeting
with online ads was mostly limited to national campaigns, says
Chris Massicotte, chief operating officer DSPolitical, an
ad-targeting firm that works with progressive candidates and says
it has served over 4 billion ads since 2011. As such firms have
proliferated, the cost of this kind of online advertising has
dropped and the technology has moved down ballot. "Most of our
clients are state legislative campaigns and city council races," he
adds.
Facebook's targeting isn't just about its own huge trove of data
-- although that helps. Campaigns and their consultants collect
information about us from multiple data brokers, donor and mailing
lists, voter registration logs and other sources of publicly
available (or purchasable) information. Advertisers, political or
not, can match their databases with our real identities to serve us
a message. Whether you're an advertiser or a politician, Facebook's
ability to match a list of names to identities on Facebook is one
of its most useful abilities as an ad targeting platform.
"If I want Democrats who voted in the last two out of four
general elections who are over the age of 55 and are women, that's
something readily available in voter files," says Mr.
Massicotte.
Facebook is also very useful for testing political messages.
Campaigns can try out a message the way marketers float new brands
on Instagram, getting near-instant feedback on what works and what
doesn't. Those messages can subsequently be pushed out to other
mediums, says Mr. Massicotte.
And as regional races gain national attention, candidates can
leverage the power of Facebook to target donors outside of their
district or state.
Tracking Voters
During the April House hearing, Rep. Debbie Dingell, (D., Mich.)
told Mr. Zuckerberg, "You don't even know all the kinds of
information Facebook is collecting from its own users." Pressing
him further, she asked how many Facebook Pixels there are across
the web. Mr. Zuckerberg didn't know. (Facebook Pixel is a piece of
code that websites embed that lets Facebook track its users as they
traverse the web.)
Her campaign website doesn't use Facebook Pixel. Instead, it
uses a different tracking pixel, from technology company NGP VAN.
The firm also allows campaigns to integrate data about voters with
Facebook's ad network. And Rep. Dingell's campaign has purchased
multiple ads on Facebook since April. Rep. Dingell's campaign
didn't reply to a request for comment.
Among the House members who questioned Mr. Zuckerberg, four
aren't currently running for office, and one doesn't have a
campaign website. Among the remaining 50, 44 have at least one form
of tracker on their campaign websites -- and 29 have the Facebook
Pixel tracker, according to Chandler Givens, chief executive of
data privacy firm TrackOff, which analyzed the sites for The Wall
Street Journal.
"That's how they know who to track via Facebook ads -- by
collecting our data without our knowledge and using it to influence
the content we see, " he says.
Not on Facebook
While advertising on Facebook appears to be the norm this
midterm season, there are those who have yet to buy ads on the
service. It's not necessarily conscientious objection to Facebook:
Perhaps an incumbent in a safe seat doesn't want to spend the
money; perhaps a candidate still sees better results from TV or
radio, or just isn't up-to-date on digital advertising.
Of House members who questioned Mr. Zuckerberg, Reps. Michael
Burgess, Kathy Castor and Bobby Rush are all running for
re-election this year but, according to Facebook's ad database,
have not bought ads on the platform. All have overwhelming odds of
winning their respective elections, according to the
election-prediction site FiveThirtyEight.
Politicians who aren't on Facebook are ceding voters' attention
to their opponents, says P.W. Singer, co-author of the book
"LikeWar," which argues that Facebook has become another front in a
global cyber conflict.
"It's both a battlespace and a marketplace," says Mr. Singer.
The result is an arms race between politicians who must spend to
get their message in front of potential voters and donors.
All of this lines up nicely with Facebook's profit motive. In
the company's most recent quarterly report, the number of monthly
active Facebook users in the U.S. and Europe was flat, but revenue
per user went up significantly. As advertisers, be they politicians
or merchants, become more sophisticated about using Facebook to
micro-target shoppers and voters, Facebook will continue to
profit.
Write to Christopher Mims at christopher.mims@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 02, 2018 14:07 ET (18:07 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024