Anatomy of a Russian Facebook ad

On Wednesday, lawmakers released some of the 3,000 ads that Russian operatives bought during the 2016 presidential campaign and its aftermath. Facebook has said these ads were created by the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm in St. Petersburg, with the goal of influencing U.S. voters.

While some of the ads urged support for Republican Donald Trump or attacked Democrat Hillary Clinton, others sought to exploit divisive social issues. The Russian operatives used Facebook tools to precisely target people with strong feelings about gun rights, African American political activism, illegal immigration or issues that might affect how Americans cast their ballots.

How they work: outrage, fear, and precision targeting

Among the ads released by lawmakers, there’s a wide variety of content, tone and visual style. While some mimic Internet memes intended for easy consumption and sharing, others take the form of more-traditional campaign-style ads or promoted events.

Using Facebook’s marketing tools, some of the ads targeted people likely to sympathize with or relate to an issue.

Facebook’s targeting options for “boosted” posts

 

Targeting options used:

Location United States: Kansas Age 14 - 65+ Gender n/a Interests Bernie Sanders, LGBT rights by country or territory, LGBT community, Hillary Clinton or Same-sex marriage

Location Living In: United States Age 18 - 65+ Gender n/a Interests Laura Ingraham, God, Ron Paul, Christianity, Bill O’Reilly (political commentator), Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Breitbart, Bible, Conservatism in the United States, Michael Savage, Mike Huckabee or Jesus

Not all of the ads were images. Any type of post can be promoted on Facebook, including videos and simple text with links to outside content. This content may be from untrustworthy sources, entirely fake, or use real government websites to promote divisive content, like the link to the petition below.

According to a March 2017 congressional testimony by Clint Watts, from George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, spreading fake content is another Russian strategy aimed at undermining trust in information sources.

How they spread: Fabricated profiles, pages and groups

A Facebook white paper in April outlined some of the methods organizations have used to create “false amplification” of content. This includes coordinated campaigns of likes, shares and comments from fake accounts, such as those set up by Russian-controlled organizations. These campaigns were conducted both on Russian-created posts and legitimate posts by news outlets and public figures.

According to Facebook, there are several places ads can appear on its platforms, including the right sidebar and interspersed throughout the main news feed. Users can share, react to or comment on ads that appear in their news feed in the same way they can on any ordinary Facebook post. Each ad also includes the profile photo and name of the page that sponsored it. Engaging with ads by hitting a “like” button or some other action can help a post or ad spread beyond its initial target and across Facebook.

Ad spending linked to the Internet Research Agency makes up only a fraction of the total spending on Facebook during the 2016 election cycle, and it’s unclear what impact these ads had.

What’s more clear is that Kremlin-linked organizations were able to use the same tools Facebook offers to advertisers and U.S. political campaigns to target specific groups of Americans.