From the many, not the few: on micro-targeting

An increasingly prominent aspect of life online is a practise that has been christened by Harvard business theorist Shoshana Zuboff as ‘surveillance capitalism’. This involves the extraction of behavioural data about individuals with the intention of targeting those individuals in ways that can be manipulative.

 

As we’ve seen with incidents like the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year, this has also spilled over directly in to politics – though it might be said that all such interactions ought to be considered seriously as novel political phenomena.

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Signify featured in The Guardian's mid term coverage

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From the US Guardian’s live coverage of the mid-terms; “This is a fear election. Fear around immigration and security versus fear about health care coverage, according to analysis by Signify, an ethical data science company. And of the two, health care seems to be the winning issue despite Donald Trump’s dire warnings of a caravan heading towards the US-Mexico border.”

Mid-terms pt I: Will healthcare deliver a blue wave?

Trump’s divisive rhetoric and a comparatively disciplined issues-driven campaign from the Democrats have presented voters with a stark choice in tomorrow’s mid-terms: turn out to vote because you fear a tidal wave of immigration and criminality, or go to the polls because you fear losing your access to affordable health care. Analysis conducted by Signify indicates that healthcare is more important to voters than any other issue and may swing results all over the country.

'Woke' Advertising: Does it work?

A new report out this week produced by our partners Hook Research and the team at Channel 4 takes a deep dive on ‘purpose driven advertising’ – a natural fit with Channel 4, the station recognised by 61% of UK consumers as the most socially conscious broadcaster in the country. We are proud to have been involved and it is great to see the story getting picked up across the sector from The Drum to Marketing Week to Campaign.