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Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and Three Activities that Enable It
Annenberg School for Communication, UC Berkeley School of Law, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center
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The desire by a majority of Americans not to be followed for the purpose of tailored content comes at a time when behavioral targeting is a fast-growing advertising practice.
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Date: 2009
Authors: Joseph Turow, Jennifer King, Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Amy Bleakley, Michael Hennessy
Type of Promotional Material/Activity Tested:
Americans’ opinions about behavioral targeting by marketers. Behavioral targeting involves following users’ actions and then tailoring advertisements for the users based on those actions.
Sample population:
1,000 US adult Internet users. A combination of landline (n=725) and wireless (n=275) random digit dial samples was used to represent all English speaking adults in the continental United States who have access to either a landline or cellular telephone.
Methodology:
Telephone interviews were conducted from June 18 to July 2, 2009 by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. The interviews averaged 20 minutes. The overall response rates were a rather typical 18% for the landline sample and 22% for the cellular sample. Statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies. The margin of sampling error for the complete set of weighted data is ±3.6% at the 95% confidence level. The margin of error is higher for smaller subgroups within the sample.
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When Americans are informed of three common ways that marketers gather data in order to tailor ads (what you do on the website you are visiting, what you did on other websites you have visited, what you do offline--for example, in stores) even higher percentages--between 73% and 86%--say they would not want such advertising.
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Young adults express as strong an aversion to being followed online and offline as do older adults. Nearly seven of 10 (67%) 18-24 year-olds say they don't want tailored advertising if it is based on tracking them on the website they are visiting, 86% say they don’t want tailored advertising if it is based on tracking them on “other websites” they have visited, and 90% reject it if it is the result of following what they do offline.
Take Away:
"The desire by a majority of Americans not to be followed for the purpose of tailored content comes at a time when behavioral targeting is a fast-growing advertising practice upon which many content providers have staked their businesses ... Americans’ widespread rejection of relevant tailored advertising is particularly startling because it flies in the face of marketers’ consistent contention that Americans desire for relevant commercial messages justifies a variety of tracking activities. When three contemporary forms of behavioral tracking are highlighted, rejection of tailored ads is even more widespread. The finding applies across all age groups, including young adults, a cohort that media executives have insisted cares little about information privacy."
Complexity rating: 1 out of 3
(Complex statistical analysis scale: 1= none, 2= moderate, 3 = difficult)
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