While there is a growing body of work on the topic, much of the discussion focuses on the use of targeting techniques. In order to further explain the effectiveness of targeted ads, a recent study by Gahn, Vrielink and Kruikemeier shines a light on the perception of tailoring by voters.
- Aim: to examine the role of perceived tailoring in the effect of online political ads.
- Methods: uses mobile experience sampling with real ad screenshots from Germany (2021) and the U.S. (2022) to capture real-time exposure and reactions, enhancing ecological validity.
- Findings: party alignment increases perceived tailoring in both countries; issue alignment does so only in Germany; combining party and issue matches does not add reinforcing effects.
- Contributions: Perceived tailoring is linked to more positive ad evaluations; shows partial mediation for party-match effects and full mediation for topic effects in Germany; causal interpretations remain cautious.
What is political microtargeting?
Political microtargeting is the combination of tailoring political advertisements to the preferences or characteristics of specific groups or even individuals and sending them to these target groups, for example distributing ad content focused on pensions primarily amongst older people. Studies have shown that receiving tailored ads can increase voters’ identification with the sending party and the chance that they will vote for it. Voters’ perception of tailoring is defined by whether they perceive a match between the ad and themselves. Thus, actual and perceived tailoring might differ, since voters might not experience certain topics as relevant to themselves as their demographic characteristics predict them to be: A woman in her 30s might receive an ad about maternity leave but not perceive it to be tailored, because she has no plans of motherhood.
When voters find an ad to be tailored to them, they perceive it as more personally relevant and thus evaluate it less critically. Since political messages mainly consist of party and issue content, Gahn et al. focus on their contribution to perceptions of tailoring. According to the authors, party content may affect voters’ perceptions of tailoring through identity-protective motivated reasoning: If the message is sent by the recipient’s preferred party, they may be more inclined to agree with its content. Similarly, issue content that aligns with their interest may increase perceptions of tailoring. Lastly, the authors expect that alignment of the party and issue content with the recipient’s preferences will additionally increase perceptions of tailoring.
What methods did the authors employ?
Since matching ad contents with individual perceptions is nearly impossible, the research on the topic is largely based on artificial environments, which may result in skewed findings. To address this gap and maximize external validity, Gahn et al. employ a mobile experience sampling method. This method combines a longitudinal research design with data donations in the form of screenshots of real ads and a panel survey.
Data was gathered during the German National Elections of 2021 and the mid-term elections in the United States in 2022 to enable comparison in a Most Different Systems – Similar Outcome design. Participants uploaded screenshots of political ads encountered during the “hot phase” of the campaigns and immediately assessed perceived tailoring and ad evaluation. The comparative design leverages substantial cross-national differences: U.S. campaigns possess more detailed data under less stringent data-protection regimes, whereas German parties typically rely on more basic techniques within a stricter regulatory context and publics with stronger data-protection attitudes.
What did Gahn et al. find?
The authors find that party alignment reliably boosts perceived tailoring in both Germany and the United States, while issue alignment increases perceived tailoring in Germany but not in the United States. Moreover, combining party and issue matches does not yield an additional reinforcing effect beyond single-dimension alignment. Perceived tailoring, in turn, is associated with more favorable ad evaluations in both countries, with mediation analyses indicating that tailoring perceptions partly mediate party-match effects and fully mediate topic-match effects in Germany, while party cues also exert a direct effect independent of perceived tailoring. However, the authors caution that causal interpretations are limited by the observational design.
Methodologically, using a mobile experience sampling approach with uploads of real campaign ads increases external validity by capturing actual exposure and immediate responses, but the design entails caveats: respondents self-selected which ads to upload, samples are not population-representative, and slight cross-country differences in questionnaire items may affect comparability.
Substantively, party sponsorship emerges as a robust cue that elevates perceived tailoring and is linked to more positive evaluations across contexts, while the influence of issue alignment on perceived tailoring appears context-dependent, evident in Germany’s multi-party environment but not in the U.S. two-party setting.
Overall, the impact of targeted ads hinges on whether recipients perceive a message as personally fitting rather than on advertisers’ intentions alone. Party alignment reliably creates this perception, while issue alignment does so only in some contexts. Further, perceived tailoring functions as a key mechanism connecting targeting attempts to the evaluations of ads by voters.
