chloe kaczenski humbert

404 Media – This Is Exactly How an Elon Musk-Funded PAC Is Microtargeting Muslims and Jews With Opposing Messages – Jason Koebler ·Oct 18, 2024
This investigation was possible because Snapchat makes highly specific political ad targeting available to the public as a spreadsheet. 404 Media downloaded this spreadsheet of thousands of political ads and filtered them to ads targeted by a company called MNI Targeted Media, which notes on its website that “data-driven strategies are revolutionizing political communication.” The Snapchat data shows MNI Interactive has been placing ads on behalf of various pro-Trump PACs, including Future Coalition PAC and Duty to America PAC. We then filtered the spreadsheet to ads placed on the behalf of Future Coalition PAC, which showed a total of 40 different ads that have been collectively viewed 3 million times on Snapchat alone. Twelve of these ads were targeted to 51 specific ZIP codes in Pennsylvania, and 28 of them were targeted to 45 specific ZIP codes in Michigan. 
I then plotted these ZIP codes as geographic areas using mapping software and combined the Snapchat data with demographic data. They show that Future Coalition PAC is targeting some of the most-Muslim parts of Michigan and some of the most-Jewish parts of Pennsylvania, according to data I cross-checked with the Association of Religion Data Archives, which maintains a database of approximate religious demographics by county and metro area.