{"id":111061,"date":"2018-05-14T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=111061"},"modified":"2018-05-13T16:20:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-13T15:20:55","slug":"you-cant-handle-the-truth-about-facebook-ads-new-harvard-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/05\/you-cant-handle-the-truth-about-facebook-ads-new-harvard-study-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can\u2019t Handle the Truth about Facebook Ads, New Harvard Study Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leia em portugu\u00eas<\/a><\/p>\n

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Illustration: Scott Gelber for The Intercept<\/p><\/div>\n

9 May 2018 – <\/em>After it emerged that Facebook user data was illicitly harvested to help elect Donald Trump, the company offered weeks of apologies,\u00a0minor reforms to how it shares such information, and a pledge to make itself \u201cmore transparent<\/a>,\u201d including new, limited\u00a0disclosures around\u00a0advertising. But Facebook still tells its\u00a02 billion users very little about how it targets them for ads that represent essentially the whole of the company\u2019s business. New research illuminates the likely reason why: The truth\u00a0grosses\u00a0people out.<\/p>\n

The study<\/a>, based on research conducted at Harvard Business School and published in the Journal of Consumer Research, is an inquiry into the tradeoffs between transparency and persuasion in the age of the algorithm. Specifically, it examines what happens if a company reveals to people how and why they\u2019ve been targeted for a given ad, exposing the algorithmic trail that, say, inferred that you\u2019re interested in discounted socks based on a constellation of behavioral signals gleaned from across the web. Such targeting happens to virtually everyone who uses the internet, almost always without context or explanation.<\/p>\n

In the Harvard study, research subjects were asked to browse a website where they were presented with various versions of an advertisement \u2014 identical except for accompanying text about why they were being shown the ad. Time and time again, people who were told that they were targeted based on activity elsewhere on the internet were turned off and became less interested in what the ad was touting than people who\u00a0saw no disclosure or were told that they were targeted based on how they were browsing the original site. In other words, if you track people across the internet, as<\/a> Facebook routinely<\/a> does<\/a>, and admit\u00a0that fact\u00a0to them, the transparency will poison\u00a0the resulting ads. The 449 paid subjects in the targeting research, who were recruited online<\/a>, were about 24 percent less likely to be interested in making a purchase or visiting the advertiser if they were in the group that was told they were tracked across websites, researchers said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAd transparency that revealed unacceptable information flows reduced ad<\/em><\/strong> effectiveness.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a related research effort described in the same study, a similar group of subjects was 17 percent less interested in purchasing if they\u00a0had been\u00a0told they\u2019d been targeted for an advertisement based on \u201cinformation that we inferred about you,\u201d as compared to people who were told they were targeted based on information they themselves provided or who were told nothing at all. Facebook makes inferences about its users not only by leveraging third-party data, but also through the use of artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to see the conflict this represents for a company recently re-dedicated to transparency and honesty that derives much of its stock market value from opacity.<\/p>\n

The paper inadvertently\u00a0offers an answer to a crucial question of our time: Why won\u2019t Facebook just level with us? Why all the long, vague transparency pledges and congressional evasion<\/a>? The study concludes that when the data mining curtain is pulled back, we really\u00a0don\u2019t like what we see. There\u2019s something unnatural about the kind of targeting that\u2019s become routine in the ad world, this paper suggests, something taboo, a violation of norms we consider inviolable \u2014 it\u2019s just harder to tell they\u2019re being violated online than off. But the revulsion we feel when we learn how we\u2019ve been algorithmically targeted, the research suggests, is much the same as what we feel when our\u00a0trust is betrayed in the analog world.<\/p>\n

The research was, as the study puts it, \u201cpremised on the notion that ad transparency undermines ad effectiveness when it exposes marketing practices that violate consumers\u2019 beliefs about \u2018information flows\u2019 \u2014 how their information ought to move between parties.\u201d So if a clothing store asks you for your email address so that it can send you promotional spam, you may not\u00a0enjoy\u00a0it, but you probably won\u2019t consider it a breach of trust. But if that same store were, say, covertly following your movements between the aisles by tracking your cellphone, that would be unnerving, to say the least. Given that Facebook operates its advertising\u00a0operation largely on the basis of data harvesting that\u2019s conducted invisibly or behind the veil of trade secrecy, it has more in common with our creepy hypothetical retailer.<\/p>\n

Facebook claims that it does offer advertising transparency in the form of a tiny, hard-to-locate button that will disclose an extremely vague summary of why you were targeted for a given ad:<\/p>\n

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\u201cConspicuous disclosure is uncommon in today\u2019s marketplace,\u201d the study notes. \u201cDigital advertisements are not usually accompanied by information on how they were generated, and when they are, this information is typically inconspicuous, merely made available for the motivated consumer to find.\u201d See above.<\/p>\n

The research team\u00a0tested what would happen if targeted ads were automatically accompanied with explanations of the targeting process, rather than requiring curious users to find the right button. The results are stark and telling:<\/p>\n

Ad transparency reduced ad effectiveness when it revealed cross-website tracking \u2014 an information flow that consumers deem unacceptable, as identified by our inductive study. \u2026 Ad transparency that revealed unacceptable information flows heightened concern for privacy over interest in personalization, reducing ad effectiveness.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words,\u00a0for the same reasons you might not actually want to look at the dingy kitchen that just cooked your greasy burger, ad transparency can be deeply alarming.<\/p>\n

For those following Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s various apologias this year, this sounds at odds with one of the Facebook CEO\u2019s favorite lines: People actually\u00a0want<\/em> targeted ads. This rationale made a notable appearance during Zuckerberg\u2019s first day of congressional testimony (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Senator, people have a control over how their information is used in ads in the product today. So if you want to have an experience where your ads aren\u2019t \u2014 aren\u2019t targeted using all the information that we have available, you can turn off third-party information.<\/em><\/p>\n

What we found is that even though some people don\u2019t like ads, people really don\u2019t like ads that aren\u2019t relevant.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0And while there is some discomfort for sure with using information in making ads more relevant, the overwhelming feedback that we get from our community is that people would rather have us show relevant content there than not.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Leslie John, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and one of the paper\u2019s authors, this defense by Zuckerberg \u201coversimplifies things.\u201d If internet users have no choice about whether they\u2019ll have to see ads or not, they may prefer to see so-called relevant ads. But, as John wrote in a Harvard Business Review article<\/a> accompanying her paper, \u201cthe research supporting ad personalization has tended to study consumers who were largely unaware that their data dictated which ads they saw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or as John explained via email, \u201cIf I have to see ads, then yeah, I\u2019d generally prefer ones that are relevant than not relevant but I\u2019d add the qualifier: as long as I get the sense that you are treating my personal information properly. <\/em>As soon as people feel that you are violating their privacy, they can become uneasy and understandably, distrustful of you.\u201d Zuckerberg\u2019s claim that you prefer\u00a0to have\u00a0your most personal information and online behavior tracked and analyzed on an industrial scale probably only checks out if\u00a0you\u2019re unaware it\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

Assuming the validity of the research here, it\u2019s no wonder Facebook doesn\u2019t want to show its math: The ads that are its lifeblood will stop working as well. John agreed that \u201cthere\u2019s a disincentive for firms to reveal unsavory information flows, so that could plausibly explain trying to hide it.\u201d Facebook is, after all, one big, world-spanning, unsavory information flow.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Sam Biddle<\/a> – sam.biddle@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

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Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9 May 2018 – When you tell people you\u2019ve been tracking them across the internet, they freak out and avoid buying your product, research at the Harvard Business School found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":111063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}