How Ads Get in Our Head: Studying Processing of Political (Mis)Targeting Using a Thought-Listing Approach

This study aims to understand how people process, think about, and respond to targeted political ads (political microtargeting). Using an extensive online thought-listing experiment (N = 1,196), we are able to closely examine how people process targeted political advertising by exploring their cognitive responses. Results show that targeted political ads that are incongruent (mistargeted based on people’s political preferences) lead people to list more thoughts about the political ad in general, as well as more thoughts about the specific content depicted in the ad, compared to targeted political ads that are congruent with their predispositions. Moreover, the (in)congruence between the targeted political ads and people’s predispositions influences the sentiment of political thoughts: People exposed to an ad that matches their predispositions list more positive thoughts, while people exposed to a mismatched ad list more negative thoughts. These results show the complexity of political microtargeting: In particular, mistargeted ads provoke elaboration and motivated reasoning.