Inside Trump's manipulative new Facebook strategy

Facebook got some bad publicity after the 2016 election when people realized that Russians and other bad actors used its ad platform to mislead voters. One reason this activity went undetected is that buying political ads on Facebook was completely opaque. No one could see the ads except for the specific people who were targeted.

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Howard is whoever you want him to be
Another major set of recent Facebook ads by the Trump campaign features testimonials from several Trump supporters. Notably, none of these testimonials are from white men, where Trump gets the overwhelming majority of his support. They come exclusively from women and minorities.
One ad features "Howard from New Mexico." As soft music plays, Howard says, "Sir, you have really inspired me and brought back my faith in this great nation. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for all the work you are doing." A video depicts an older African-American man smiling broadly.

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But in many other versions of the ad, Howard is portrayed as a young African-American man engrossed in his cell phone. Howard is still from New Mexico and still has the exact same quote about Trump.

So what's going on?
The power of Facebook is its ability to micro-target audiences. Facebook vacuums up as much data as possible and then sells the ability to target its users on every imaginable attribute. The Trump campaign is taking full advantage of this. That is why there are so many versions of every ad.
The Facebook ad library only provides the most basic targeting information, but it is enough to expose the campaign's strategy with Howard. This is the targeting by age and gender for a version of the ad featuring the "young Howard."

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