Political advertisers have access to increasingly sophisticated microtargeting techniques. One such technique is tailoring ads to the personality traits of citizens. Questions have been raised about the effectiveness of this political microtargeting (PMT) technique. In two experiments, we investigate the causal effects of personality-congruent political ads. In Study 1, we first assess participants’ extraversion trait by means of their own text data (i.e., by using a personality profiling algorithm), and in a second phase, target them with either a personality-congruent or incongruent political ad. In Study 2, we followed the same protocol, but instead targeted participants with emotionally-charged congruent ads, to establish whether PMT can be effective on an affect-based level. The results show evidence that citizens are more strongly persuaded by political ads that match their own personality traits. These findings feed into relevant and timely contributions to a salient academic and societal debate.

政治广告客户可以使用日趋完善的微观定位技术。一种这样的技术是根据公民的个性特征定制广告。关于这种政治微目标（PMT）技术的有效性提出了疑问。在两个实验中，我们调查了个性一致的政治广告的因果关系。在研究1中，我们首先通过参与者自己的文本数据（即使用个性分析算法）评估参与者的外向性特征，然后在第二阶段中，通过个性一致或不一致的政治广告来定位他们。在研究2中，我们遵循相同的协议，但针对具有情感一致性的广告的参与者，以确定PMT是否可以在基于情感的水平上有效。结果表明有证据表明，公民会被与其个性特征相匹配的政治广告所吸引。这些发现为及时的学术和社会辩论提供了相关而及时的贡献。