IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/pscirm/v9y2021i1p215-222_16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Missing the Target? Using Surveys to Validate Social Media Ad Targeting

Author

Listed:
  • Sances, Michael W.

Abstract

Facebook ads are increasingly used by political scientists as a method of survey recruitment. A key advantage is said to be the ability to recruit targeted audiences defined by demographics, political beliefs, location, and numerous other attributes. The same feature has been decried by non-researchers concerned about potential racial discrimination and foreign influence in elections. The extent to which these ads actually reach their targets, however, is unknown. Using a series of six surveys and 20 targeted ads, I show these ads regularly fail to reach their targets. The success rate ranges from 23 to 99 percent, and ads targeted toward groups defined by self-reported data and broader geographic locations are generally more successful.

Suggested Citation

  • Sances, Michael W., 2021. "Missing the Target? Using Surveys to Validate Social Media Ad Targeting," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 215-222, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:9:y:2021:i:1:p:215-222_16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2049847018000687/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Kubinec & Haillie Na‐Kyung Lee & Andrey Tomashevskiy, 2021. "Politically connected companies are less likely to shutdown due to COVID‐19 restrictions," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2155-2169, September.
    2. Jacobson, Sophie, 2024. "Policies Can Still Create New Politics: Contemporary Causal Evidence from New York Preschool Parents," OSF Preprints 9nfg7, Center for Open Science.
    3. André Grow & Daniela Perrotta & Emanuele Del Fava & Jorge Cimentada & Francesco Rampazzo & Sofia Gil‐Clavel & Emilio Zagheni & René D. Flores & Ilana Ventura & Ingmar Weber, 2022. "Is Facebook's advertising data accurate enough for use in social science research? Insights from a cross‐national online survey," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(S2), pages 343-363, December.
    4. André Grow & Daniela Perrotta & Emanuele Del Fava & Jorge Cimentada & Francesco Rampazzo & B. Sofia Gil-Clavel & Emilio Zagheni & René D. Flores & Ilana Ventura & Ingmar G. Weber, 2021. "How reliable is Facebook’s advertising data for use in social science research? Insights from a cross-national online survey," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2021-006, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    5. Beknazar-Yuzbashev, George & Stalinski, Mateusz, 2022. "Do social media ads matter for political behavior? A field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:9:y:2021:i:1:p:215-222_16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ram .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.