microtarget

verb

mi·​cro·​tar·​get ˈmī-krō-ˌtär-gət 

microtargeted; microtargeting; microtargets

transitive verb

: to direct tailored advertisements, political messages, etc., at (people) based on detailed information about them (such as what they buy, watch, or respond to on a website) : to target (small groups of people) for highly specific advertisements or messages

Like social media platforms, Hulu and streaming services attract advertisers by offering them precision ad targeting, which can microtarget users based on information such as gender, race and search history with much higher precision than traditional broadcast advertising.

—Cat Zakrzewski

microtargeting noun

Microtargeting lets campaigns tap Facebook's vast caches of data to reach specific audiences with pinpoint accuracy, going after voters in certain neighborhoods, jobs and age ranges, or even serving up ads only to fans of certain television shows or sports teams.

—Nancy Scola

Examples of microtarget in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The streamer’s secret sauce is its ability to microtarget ads to customers, including through the beachfront real estate that is the Roku menu homepage. —Josef Adalian, Vulture, 6 May 2021

After Trump’s 2016 victory, Parscale worked with consultants and an ex-Cambridge Analytica data scientist to build out a data storehouse that could better microtarget audiences with specialized ads, former collaborators said. —Garance Burke, Fortune, 18 Nov. 2020

In 2020, campaigns use this data to microtarget us with record numbers of online ads, mailers, knocks on the door and text messages. —Washington Post, 26 Oct. 2020

Word History

First Known Use

1986, in the meaning defined above