The Effects of GDPR on Political Marketing

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years. The regulation fundamentally reshapes the way in which data is handled across every sector, including political marketing and campaigning. This research examines the negative effects of the GDPR on the field of political marketing and its further development in Europe. Online political microtargeting is a relatively new phenomenon, especially for the European political market. However, increasing tendency of using data-driven voter research during the political campaigns, in order to identify the individual voter and craft the personalized political advertising strategy, alarmed European lawmakers. Personalized political communication involves collecting information about people and based on common behavioral pattern, making the right segmentation and targeting with appropriate ads. The practice has shown to be cost-effective and efficient at the same time. It is interesting to observe, in the era of the internet of things and big data, how adequate the GDPR is and how much of time responsive it can appear for the field experts. What is the relative value of the new regulation and to what extent it might contribute to the creation of data monopoly or oligopoly on the market? By using descriptive analyzes and process tracing, this research tests hypothesis claiming that a) GDPR creates obstacles to a greater extent for SME working on data collection and processing rather than for big companies, b) GDPR does create the artificial challenge for the further development of political marketing as a field which has a high contribution in increasing political participation and more knowledge among voters about certain topics, c) Relating the field of political marketing, GDPR brings greater loss for the fair competition and free market principles.