Facebooks 2016 Election Team Gave Advertisers A Blueprint To A Divided US

Source: Buzzfeed

The company offered advertisers a breakdown of the US electorate's interests, religions, races, and dislikes during a fraught election season compromised by bad actors.


During the 2016 election season, Facebook provided political advertisers with a targetable breakdown of a fractured United States, which could’ve been used as a blueprint for exploiting the country’s divisions.

According to a political advertising sales pitch obtained by BuzzFeed News, Facebook carved the US electorate into 14 segments — from left-leaning "youthful urbanites" to a pro-NRA, pro–Tea Party group it bizarrely labeled as "the great outdoors." It detailed their demographic information — including religion and race in some cases — and offered them to political advertisers via Facebook’s sales teams. For advertisers using Facebook’s self-serve platform, the segments could be reached by purchasing larger bundles ranging from “very liberal” to “very conservative.”

The "very liberal" bundle included an estimated audience of 28.6 million people broken down into three groups — “youthful urbanites,” “transitionals,” and “politically engaged city dwellers.” The "very conservative" bundle included an estimated audience of 22.8 million people broken down into three groups — “post grad nest builders," “family values,” and “the great outdoors.”

“This type of approach is almost exclusively designed for nonpolitical professional people who want to mix it up.”
“We typically help marketers across all verticals understand audiences this way, and we briefly used this framework to help inform how a small number of marketers built their campaigns,” a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News, adding the pitch had been removed as part of a "regular refresh." Said the spokesperson, “these segments are no longer available.”

Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/facebooks-2016-election-team-gave-advertisers-a-blueprint?utm_term=.okJ2rP7Vy#.xiLa0x9Vz

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