Microtargeting: How campaigns know you better than you know yourself
(A record number of political ads are blasting the swing state of Ohio. Martin Savidge reports from his hometown.)
In the midst of the bombardment of political advertisements, such as the ones featured in the video link above, during the final days of the 2012 presidential race, CNN.com highlighted a new area in which voters are being targeted by these campaigns, the web. It’s called microtargeting. This recent technique utilizes browser histories for deeper insight into the preferences and personal interests of the people surfing the internet. These campaigns then use that information to predict how a person may vote and target them based on that prediction at the places they are most likely to visit online. Eitan Hersh, a political science professor who studies the impact of microtargeting at Yale University, explained it this way, “If a campaign knows that you're of this religion and this race and went to college, you're likely to have a different set of values ... the campaign is likely to reach out to you on those attributes." However, in the midst of the innovation of this targeting method, microtargeting has not been as well received by the public as was hoped. According to the article, 86% of Americans said they did not like political advertising tailored to their interests. Herst commented on the statistics concerning this political campaigning method saying, "The downside, of course, is that we might not like being stereotyped."
While it is more common to think of individuals being stereotyped by their race, gender, or physical abilities, it is more shocking to realize that people are now being targeted based on the types of websites they surf online. This phenomenon is not solely contained amongst political campaigns, but it is a method many other companies use as well. Google allows its marketers to target audiences based on demographical information. Facebook lets advertisers seek subsections of their users based on preferences indicated and pages liked. This practice of microtargeting is not just a seasonal use in the midst of the presidential campaign, but it is a method that will continue to grow more commonly practiced and accepted in the online world unless the public stand up against such policies. Over 80% of the Americans surveyed in CNN’s article said they dislike the idea of being targeted based on their interests, and it is time that this majority speaks out before microtargeting becomes a generally accepted practice. Microtargeting stereotypes people and targets individuals in an unfair manner based on generalized assumptions. The world has fought to eliminate stereotypes in many facets of society, and continues to battle those hurtful generalizations. Therefore, we should not, and cannot, allow another method of stereotyping to become accepted in our society. Microtargeting is not an innovation, it is a degradation. 
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