Microtargeting means analyzing data to predict the behavior, interests, and opinions held by specific groups of people and then serving them the messages they're most likely to respond to.
Yet, political journalists and others that cover this industry often seem to gloss over exactly what
microtargeting means.
Not exact matches
Less clear is their power as a tool for targeted persuasion; Cambridge Analytica has claimed that OCEAN scores can be used to drive voter and consumer behavior through «
microtargeting,»
meaning narrowly tailored messages.
But a successful
microtargeting campaign might have a 5 to 10 percent conversion rate at best, which
means that 90 to 95 percent of your targets aren't going to buy from you despite being your perfect potential customer.
When I first learned about how far advertisers could
microtarget to people facebook, even without a data breach, I thought this must be a minefield of potential hyper influence for both commercial and nefarious political
means.