Swiss weekly Sonntagszeitung’s “Multimedia” section delivers almost every weekend some insights that catch my attention. This week I stumbled upon the term microtargeting in the US presidential race. Microtargeting are datamining techniques that are used by democrats and republicans to gather, analyse data about potential voters, to predictively segment the voters market, and deliver tailored messages to those voters.
Typically Microtargeting builds databases with track records of voter habits. But not only their latest ballot is stored. It is also combined with data from commercial marketing vendors, such as Acxiom, Dun & Bradstreet or InfoUSA containing information on voter’s dogs, favourite food, income etc.
Seems to raise no privacy issues in the US. But I guess it would not be very popular in Europe. Although statistical software company SPSS is preparing market entry for microtargeting in Europe (according to Sonntagszeitung).
