Data analytics have fundamentally changed the way political parties and campaign groups target potential voters. It is a complex and rapidly evolving area of activity that most people find hard to fathom.
None of us likes to think we would allow how we vote to be influenced by what pops into our news feed. The truth is that we almost certainly are. A Demos report commissioned by my office as part of our investigation into data analytics and political campaigning reveals that methods such as emotional targeting, cross-device tracking and detailed audience segmentation can influence consumers in a commercial context.
Whether these same tools are having equal effect in a political setting is yet to be determined. But it is reasonable to assume that as political campaigning evolves, more state-of-the-art marketing techniques will be adopted. And we know that political campaign groups are investing heavily in them — more than 40 per cent of advertising spend by campaigners in the 2017 UK election was on digital.