How pop-up ads get us hooked

DO YOU ever get the sense that advertisements you see online know more about you than you might expect? Have you ever wondered why, after seeing an ad for a product, you later realise that you might actually be the kind of person who would want to buy it?

If so, it s likely that the ads on your screen have been behaviourally targeted.

Behavioural targeting uses information about nearly everything you do online clicks, searches, social media, what you ve bought and browsed to select ads that marketers think will appeal to you based on your unique online behaviour.

Our research shows, however, that these ads do more than reflect your past or future preferences. They can change how you see yourself in fundamental ways.

What makes this practice unique is that it does not involve advertising the exact things you have already shown an interest in, as is the case when ads for the shoes you bought two weeks ago follow you around online.

Instead, behavioural targeting predicts what you might like based on the profile created by tracking your online actions. To adopt Hollywood parlance, behavioural targeting typecasts you.

For example, if you browse learning about environmental causes or donating to Greenpeace, you might see an ad for an eco-friendly clothing brand on your favorite gossip column. Someone else visiting the same website, but who has instead searched for luxury cars and symphony tickets, might receive an ad for an upscale restaurant.

Different people receive different ads, even on the same site, because an algorithm has identified them as a certain type of consumer.

As a marketing practice, behavioural targeting is relatively new. However, uncertainty about who would own consumer data and technological limitations led publishers to question the value of behavioural targeting and delay adopting it.

Behavioural targeting gained momentum over the past decade, thanks in part to advances in tracking and prediction.

A patent filed by Yahoo! in 2006 exemplifies how the behavioural targeting process was standardised to produce user profile scores based on recency, frequency and intensity of clicks, which in turn determine ads.

The predictive power of consumer data within marketing was brought into the public spotlight by, fittingly, Target.

In 2012, the retailer predicted that a customer was pregnant well before the young woman told her father.

Target did so by creating a model that tracked purchase choices and predicted pregnancy status based on specific items for, example, lotion, multivitamins, and cotton balls.

While the tracking and advertising described in the article occurred offline, the story highlighted marketers ability to collect and use individual-level behaviour to deliver marketing messages.

How can you tell that an ad has been behaviourally targeted?

When you take a close look at the upper right hand corner of the ad that you see on your favourite websites such as Yahoo or Gawker, do you see a little blue triangle? Maybe a tiny AdChoices script? If so, BINGO!

The AdChoices icon is a symbol affixed to an ad denoting that it was selected for you based on your past online behaviour.

While marketers may like behavioural targeting, consumer sentiment is less universally positive.

Older consumers are more concerned about their privacy and view this type of advertising as intrusive. In contrast, younger consumers think it s great.

If people don t universally love these ads, why are they so common and effective?

Social psychologists have long known that giving people a label can change their behaviour.

For example, a classic study found that being called charitable after donating makes someone more likely to make a second donation. We act consistently with who we believe we are, and labels from others can shape our identity.

Research recently published in the Journal of Consumer Research, found that receiving a behaviourally targeted ad can shift a person s selfperceptions, to match personality traits associated with the product.

When you receive a behaviourally targeted ad, it is the equivalent of a marketer saying you are someone who cares about the environment or you have sophisticated tastes

In our studies, receiving an ad for an eco-friendly product or a sophisticated restaurant led consumers to feel more green and more sophisticated, respectively, when they believed the ad was behaviourally targeted. Such an ad acts like a label.

Receiving a behaviourally targeted ad can not only change how people see themselves, but also cause them to modify their behaviour to be consistent with revised self-perceptions. Believing an ad to be behaviorally targeted increases interest in buying the product. However, this belief also affects additional behaviors.

Our findings have good news for readers worried that behaviourally targeted ads might make them believe all sorts of things about themselves. The results of our studies reveal that targeting has to be accurate to significantly affect self-perceptions.

If you have never engaged in any behaviour online that would suggest that you are interested in upscale dining such as to Google on (how to microwave dinner and fast food restaurants), an ad for an upscale restaurant would not suddenly make you feel like someone with sophisticated dining preferences.

Because the accuracy of targeting matters, marketing managers hoping to profit from this have a vested interest in making sure their algorithms are good at identifying a consumer s personality based on their click-stream data.

For consumers, if you spend a lot of time seeking information for other people (such as buying work supplies, finding information about a partner s hobby, searching for gifts), your search history may produce less accurate ads. Targeted ads on mobile devices may be more accurate because mobile devices are commonly single-user.

For those concerned about receiving such ads, the best solution may be to opt out entirely. As part of the campaign around increasing awareness of the AdChoices icon, the Digital Advertising Alliance has made it easy for people to opt out with a few quick clicks to get you back to the age of anonymous.

The bottom line is that targeted ads are not only pervasive and effective at growing click-through rates and purchases but may also be powerful in unexpected ways.

When consumers know that an ad has been behaviourally targeted that is when it has the power to change how they see themselves.

Walker Reczek is associate professor, Summers is a PhD candidate, and Smith is assistant professor at The Ohio State University. Source: https://theconversation.com

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