Editor’s Note: Putting politics aside, The Atlantic lays out for the public just how the Trump campaign adeptly used the Facebook advertising methodology to create a constant message to social media consumers. Successful Facebook advertising includes lots of image and marketing copy testing in order to find the subtle combinations that resonate. Most of the Trump campaign’s Facebook ads were identical, which provided a low cost, low lift route for the campaign to leverage the Facebook machinery, which uses AI to select the ads that appear the most to the audiences that respond well to the ads they’ve already created. Traditional models of purchasing targeted advertising – or swaying voters through specific media advertising – don’t work in the social media construct. Read more from the Atlantic:

How Facebook Works for Trump

Donald Trump won the presidency by using the social network’s advertising machinery in exactly the way the company wanted. He’s poised to do it again.

Story by Ian Bogost and Alexis C. Madrigal

“Trump didn’t master Facebook because of foreign interference by Russia or psychographic exploitation via Cambridge Analytica. He didn’t do it via microtargeting—the ability to send highly differentiated audiences just the right messages to change attitudes or inspire action—either, despite conventional understanding. His campaign did so via pure, blunt constancy, using Facebook in exactly the way the tech giant intended: pouring heaps of money and data into Facebook’s automated advertising system.”