Is the Internet Stalking Us?

Since you’re reading this blog post, I think it’s fair to assume you are an internet user, meaning that you’ve likely come across personalized internet ads or “online behavioral advertising” (OBA). It turns out these tactics may be doing marketers more harm than good.

A study by Chang-Dae Ham, an advertising professor at the University of Illinois, examined the interaction of various psychological factors, and found that the perception of risk consumers felt was so much stronger than the perception of ad benefits that users tried to avoid the advertising all together.

As an individual plagued by personalized internet ads, created by tracking, aggregating, and analyzing consumers’ online behaviors, this may not come as any surprise to you. They seem to be most prevalent after you’ve bought the product you were researching, they incorrectly assume your interests, and worst of all, it feels creepy to think about how often they actually are able to predict your preferences.

In the study, Ham looked at how consumers assess the risks (like privacy concerns) and benefits (like personalization) of targeted ads and how consumers protect against such tactics. Throughout research into both of these areas, Ham took into consideration the participants’ feelings of self-efficacy, in addition to reactance and the participants’ understanding of OBA.

According to related studies, 70% of consumers are “aware of OBA, but have a poor understanding of what exactly a third party cookie is”—it sits on your hard drive collecting your online behavior after being dropped there by a website—“and how OBA works.” With such low levels of understanding, Ham posits that consumers are at risk.

The study collected information from 422 respondents ranging from 18 to 32 years old. Ham focused on this sample age because the college students were considered “the largest and most active Internet user group across various Internet platforms.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those respondents that more fully understood the privacy risks of participating in OBA had a higher tendency to avoid targeted ads. These perceived risks also were found to outweigh the benefits of being presented with relevant ads.

However, the privacy risk wasn’t always enough to convince consumers to opt out. Those using social networks like Facebook were reportedly “willing to disclose their information in order to maintain social connections with their friends… and to satisfy their need to belong.”

Even though research has shown college-age individuals are “less concerned about privacy than those in older age groups,” those who opted into cookies and behavior tracking seemed “uncomfortable and irritated with highly personalized ad messages.” Ham posits this is because they still feel they can’t control the situation.

In the end, Ham suggests that marketers are doing themselves a disservice by not being more open about the process of targeting ads—and giving clearer benefits—since current methods leave consumers feeling annoyed. He believes that giving the consumer more control would be better for everyone, and my inner control freak tends to agree. Although the ad agencies probably already have that figured out about me, don’t they?

Image credits: IPdigIT and L. Brian Stauffer, University of Illinois News Bureau [for the picture of Professor Chang-Dae Ham]