Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 10 Hyper-Niche Markets and Advertising The thing that we are trying to do at Facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently. Mark Zuckerberg This morning when checking my Facebook page, I noticed two advertisements. One headline stated “Remove skin tags safely.” Yuck, but realistically, probably appropriate for my age. The other was in a language I didn’t even recognize. (It looked a little like German but was definitely not German.) So, as far as superaccurate hyper-targeting advertising might go, it appears that Facebook still needs some work. The debate about bull’s-eye precise niche advertising tends to revolve around privacy. The logic is that in order for an advertiser to deliver advertising to me in a manner that demonstrates an innate knowledge of my buying behavior and preferences for certain kinds of products, some company somewhere knows more about me than I may be comfortable sharing with complete strangers. Obviously, there are no easy answers to what advertising ought to look like in our new cyber-world. But no matter what people might think about privacy Advertising and Society: An Introduction, Second Edition. Edited by Carol J. Pardun. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 162 Joe Bob Hester and Tom Weir expectations related to advertising, hyper-targeted advertising is here to stay – especially in the online world. Ultimately, someone has to pay for content on the Web. While many companies continue to experiment with different kinds of market models, it usually comes down to paying a subscription for access, being willing to be exposed to advertising, or some combination of the two. The subscription model is working in some areas, but so many consumers are used to a free and open Internet that clearly the subscription approach has limited appeal. So that leaves advertising. The arguments in this chapter focus on Facebook – a phenomenon so ubiquitous that it’s no longer a question of whether or not we’re on Facebook, but how it’s incorporated into our lives. Online Auctions Additionally, our commercial life extends far beyond Facebook of course. For example, we are buying more of our goods online and often within an auction site. While eBay may be the best-known online auction, the company is not alone in trying to capture online consumers’ hearts and minds. Companies like QuiBids, BidMax, BidCandy, ZBiddy, AlwaysAtAuction are all looking for ways to convince us to move our buying patterns onto the Internet. According to eBay’s website, as of 2011 there were 97 million active users. For a company that began in 1995, that’s meteoric growth – even by Internet standards. EBay’s website reports $62 billion worth of goods sold in 2010. And, that’s just eBay. It’s mind-boggling. And Other Ways to Make Money in the Digital World As the Web continues to develop as commercial marketplace, Google has been at the forefront, figuring out ways to help advertisers reach their customers. With Google AdSense and other programs, more companies are moving more of their ad dollars into an online presence. According to Joe Mandese’s Online Media Daily posting on March 12, 2012, digital advertising grew from 10 percent of US advertising to 18 percent between 2007 and 2011. In addition, Mandese’s March 13 posting posits an increasing attention to “predictive” audience data-targeting, which is only going to continue to raise concerns about privacy. Clearly, it’s a balancing act. We all understand that the digital world has to figure out how to make money in order to sustain the content that we not only expect but demand. But, as technology improves and companies continue to find better ways to figure out what we want to buy and how to provide ads that are targeted just for us, we will continue to debate how much privacy we’re willing to give up in order have the digital world that we love. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Hyper-Niche Markets and Advertising 163 Advertising on Facebook is at the forefront of this debate. Joe Bob Hester and Tom Weir, both advertising professors with extensive media planning experience, have different interpretations on whether ads on Facebook are fantastic – or a creepy invasion of privacy. Who’s right? You decide. Ideas to Get You Thinking . . . 1 2 3 4 Think about a casual acquaintance of yours – someone you don’t know very well, but well enough to tell the person what you’re planning to do. Go online and see how much information you can find out about the person within an hour. After you compile the information, share your findings with your acquaintance and get the person’s reaction. Were you surprised about the kinds of information you were able to find? Why, or why not? Keep track of the ads that show up on your Facebook page every day for about a week. What do these ads say about you? Are they an accurate representation of the kinds of goods and services that you like? Examine your list of “friends” on Facebook. How many of them are strangers to you? Try and figure out why you agreed to “friend” them. Did you discover anything interesting about how these strangers became your friends? For the next week (or month if you’re really ambitious!), keep a list of everything over $10 that you buy (not counting food). When you have compiled your list, check eBay or another auction site and see how many of these products you could buy at auction. Watch a few of the auctions. Could you have bought the products at a lower price than you paid in the store? What other observations can you make? Other Topics to Debate 1 2 3 4 There should be stronger regulations for marketers’ use of social media. Social media are so effective that “traditional” advertising is no longer necessary for a company’s product or service to reach the target market. How people present themselves on Facebook and other social media sites is an accurate description of how they really view themselves. Rather than being advertising-based, Facebook should give users a choice of advertising or subscription base as an option for profitability. If You’d Like to Know More . . . Anderson, B., Fagan, P., Woodnutt, T., and Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2012). Facebook psychology: Popular questions answered by research. Psychology of Popular Media Culture 1(1): 23–37. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 164 Joe Bob Hester and Tom Weir Debatin, B., Lovejoy, J. P., Horn, A. K., and Hughes, B. N. (2009). Facebook and online privacy: Attitudes, behaviors, and unintended consequences. Journal of ComputerMediated Communication 15: 83–108. Taylor, D. G., Lewin, J. E., and Strutton, D. (2011). Friends, fans, and followers: Do ads work on social networks? How gender and age shape receptivity. Journal of Advertising Research 51(1) (Mar.): 258–275. References Mandese, J. (2012). From iAd to launching pad, new “predictive” data platform could be organizing principle mobile advertising has been waiting for. OnlineMediaDaily (Mar. 12). At http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/170038/#axzz2Oe5Zu 590, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Mandese, J. (2012). Big 5 outpace ad industry two to one, emphasis on digital cited. OnlineMediaDaily (Mar. 13). At http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/ 170026/#axzz2Oe5Zu590, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Argument Hyper-targeted and social: Why Facebook advertising may be advertising at its best Joe Bob Hester University of North Carolina, USA Social networking is the leading content category in terms of the number of online display ads delivered, accounting for more than 25 percent of US impressions, and Facebook is the single largest publisher of all US display impressions. In the third quarter of 2011, Facebook delivered more display ad impressions than Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and AOL combined (comScore 2011). And, with an audience of more than 800 million worldwide, Facebook was predicted to double its ad sales to $3.8 billion in 2011. Why? Facebook advertising combines hyper-targeting with social networking, “converting the primary gesture of social media – sharing – into something potentially even better for branding than TV ads: a supercharged version of word of mouth” (Hof 2011a). EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Hyper-Niche Markets and Advertising 165 Hyper-Targeting Whether you are watching a television show, reading a magazine, listening to a radio station, or browsing a website, you will see advertisements that are obviously not meant for you. That’s because traditional media advertising is based on target audience concentration. Advertisers select media vehicles in which a high percentage of audience members fit a particular demographic, psychographic, lifestyle, and/or usage profile. Messages exposed to audience members who do not fit the profile are essentially wasted. When the target audience is very broad (i.e., adults ages 25–54), the percentage of audience members who fit the profile may be quite high, but there will still be wasted exposures. When the target audience is more specific (i.e., married women ages 25–34 with one or more children living at home), advertisers are often forced to use more wasteful media vehicles in order to reach enough of their target audience members. Hyper-targeting greatly reduces waste. A term originally coined by MySpace, “hyper-targeting” refers to delivering advertising targeted to specific interestbased segments of a social network based on very specific criteria (Riley 2007). Facebook and other social networking sites have three primary sources of information about users (Gold 2009): registration information (basic information gathered when users set up an account), profile information (posted by the user on his/her profile: favorite movies, music, books, etc.), and behavioral data (things that users do or look at online, pages they’re fans of, events they respond to, etc.). According to Facebook’s ad guidelines (Facebook 2012), this translates into being able to target based on how your audience “and their friends interact and affiliate with the brands, artists, and businesses they care about,” and involves factors such as: • • • • • location, language, education, and work; age, gender, birthday, and relationship status; likes and interests such as “camping,” “hiking,” or “backpacking” instead of “tents” or “campers”; friends of connections (friends of users already connected to your page or app); connections (fans of your page). Hof (2011b) sums it up nicely: “Facebook’s value proposition to advertisers is precisely that it can offer more data on its users – and not just behavioral data like many Web sites and ad networks, but accurate personal data provided by users themselves.” With so much data and personalization available, advertising becomes as targeted as it could possibly be. However, Facebook goes even farther by integrating advertising directly into the social networking experience. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 166 Joe Bob Hester and Tom Weir Social Networking At the end of 2011, the research firm comScore, Inc. reported that social networking was the most popular online activity, accounting for nearly one in every five minutes spent online and reaching 82 percent of the world’s Internet population. The leading social network, Facebook, reached 55 percent of the world’s global audience and accounted for one in every seven minutes spent online and three in every four social networking minutes. In addition to interacting with their friends, Facebook users can interact with a brand by liking a brand, interacting with a brand’s app, or checking in at a brand’s location. These “organic” interactions between people and brands can be used to enhance Facebook advertising. It works like this. Brand X creates a short post that is transformed into an ad (Facebook calls it a “sponsored story”) which appears in the right-hand column of Facebook under a “Sponsored” heading for members of the target audience. If one of your friends, Suzie, has clicked the “Like” button on this post, a line of text will appear in the ad reading “Suzie likes Brand X.” In addition, a story about this activity will be generated on all of Suzie’s friends’ news feeds. People have an average of 130 Facebook fans. When they “like” a brand, that fact spreads to the news feeds of those friends, and those friends may spread it further. When Mars Chocolate introduced M&M’s Pretzel by offering samples to 40,000 fans, each of whom could spread the offer to two friends, 120,000 samples went out in under 48 hours (Hof 2011a). This type of “social” advertising is important because, according to Nielsen Co., it is more effective. When your friend is in the ad, you are twice as likely to remember it, more likely to click on it versus traditional display ads, and your purchase intent quadruples (Hof 2011a). Optimization In addition to being able to hyper-target very specific groups and to present them with more effective “social” ads, Facebook provides the tools for advertisers to optimize their ad dollars by providing numerous metrics of campaign and ad performance. Some of these metrics include: • • • • • social percent: the percentage of impressions where the ad was shown with names of viewers’ friends; clicks: the number of times users click on ads; impressions: the number of times an ad is shown to a user; click-through rate (CTR): the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions in a given time period; average cost per click (CPC): ad cost relative to the number of clicks. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Hyper-Niche Markets and Advertising 167 Using these and other metrics along with demographic information, advertisers can determine which ad is performing best and reallocate budget to the highestperforming ad within a campaign. What about Consumers? So far, we’ve outlined the advantages of Facebook advertising from the standpoint of the advertiser. Consumers gain substantial advantages from Facebook advertising as well. A recent report from McCann Worldgroup revealed that 71 percent of consumers are willing to share shopping data with a brand online, and 86 percent see that there are major benefits associated with sharing this data. Part of this willingness to share is based on the type of data. As one American woman in the report stated, “My shopping data is not ME” (McCann Truth Central 2011: 11). First and foremost, because of both hyper-targeting and “social” advertising, Facebook users are more likely to be exposed to more relevant advertising that is based on what they are interested in or where they live. Just look at the ads on your own Facebook page. Chances are that you can probably figure out why you are being shown the ads that you are seeing by thinking about the information/interests you’ve provided in your profile. While the system is not perfect and you may still be exposed to some nonrelevant advertising, the situation should improve as more and more brands begin to use Facebook advertising. In addition, Facebook continues to refine and improve its algorithms for using data in advertising. Facebook’s web interface is also less cluttered by advertising than many web properties, and certainly less cluttered than traditional media. Facebook users typically see only one or two ads in the right-hand column of their news feed. There are no pop-ups, pop-unders, expanding banners, or any of the other annoyances associated with typical banner ads. The simple text designs have more in common with Google AdWords than with traditional banner advertising. Facebook users also have a tremendous amount of control over what ads they see. If you see an ad you don’t like, simply click on the cross in the upper right-hand corner to hide the ad or to hide all ads from that particular advertiser. On the other hand, if you would like to see more ads, click on the “See all” link to see “Ads and sponsored stories you may like.” Finally, advertising revenue allows Facebook to provide its services free of cost to users. Facebook’s total current annual revenue, which comes mostly from online advertising, is estimated to be about $5 billion and growing. This business model is in line with many traditional media forms in the United States, where advertising provides the majority of revenue while users receive the service free (television and radio) or at a reduced cost (newspapers and magazines). Every so often a rumor goes around online that Facebook is going to start charging for use, but Facebook has repeatedly stated that it has no plans to do so. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 168 Joe Bob Hester and Tom Weir Some argue that there is a hidden cost of using Facebook: loss of privacy. However, given the types of information available on Facebook, user controls, and the company’s privacy policy, it is difficult to make this argument. Facebook’s privacy policy (2011) is quite specific: you own your own data and it is not shared unless you give your permission, Facebook has given you notice, or personally identifying information has been removed. As far as using your data for advertising purposes, the policy states that We only provide data to our advertising partners or customers after we have removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it, or have combined it with other people’s data in a way that it is no longer associated with you. Similarly, when we receive data about you from our advertising partners or customers, we keep the data for 180 days. After that, we combine the data with other people’s data in a way that it is no longer associated with you. (Facebook 2011) Users even have control of the use of their names in social ads. You can edit social ad settings so that when you take an action such as liking a page, that action does not end up in an ad displayed to your friends. The Future Facebook’s success has other social networks working to connect advertising with the social experience they provide. For instance, Twitter announced plans in 2011 to let advertisers place ads in front of Twitter users who are similar to ones following their Twitter accounts. That means users who aren’t following a particular brand on Twitter might still see an ad for that brand in their timeline because Twitter thinks they have things in common with people who do follow the brand (Kafka 2011). Where will it go from here? Predicting the future is difficult. Who could have foreseen the dramatic changes in the advertising industry, or society for that matter, in the last 20 years? The marriage of hyper-targeting and social networking as practiced by Facebook advertising could be just a passing fad, but that seems unlikely. On the other hand, while it is equally unlikely that we “will see the extinction of all ads that don’t incorporate social” (Shih 2011), the combination of hyper-targeting and social, this “supercharged word of mouth,” seems to be here to stay. References comScore (2011). It’s a social world: Top 10 need-to-knows about social networking and where it’s headed (Dec. 21). At http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/ Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/it_is_a_social_world_top_10_need-to-knows_ about_social_networking, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Facebook (2011). Data use policy. At http://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Hyper-Niche Markets and Advertising 169 Facebook (2012). Facebook advertising guidelines (Dec. 17). At http://www.facebook. com/ad_guidelines.php, accessed Apr. 3, 2013. Gold, H. (2009). Hypertargeting registered users. ClickZ. At http://www.clickz.com/clickz/ column/1710063/hypertargeting-registered-users, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Hof, R. (2011a). Facebook’s new advertising model: You. Forbes (Nov. 16). At http://www. forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2011/11/16/facebooks-new-advertising-model-you/, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Hof, R. (2011b). What Facebook’s FTC privacy settlement means to marketers. Forbes (Nov. 29). At http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2011/11/29/what-facebooks-ftcprivacy-settlement-means-to-marketers/, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Kafka, P. (2011). Twitter ramps up its ad plan again, with ads you haven’t asked to see. All Things D (Aug. 31). At http://allthingsd.com/20110831/twitter-ramps-up-its-adplan-again-with-ads-you-havent-asked-to-see/, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. McCann Truth Central (2011).The truth about privacy: Executive summary. McCann Truth Central. At http://www.scribd.com/doc/69322060/The-Truth-About-Privacy, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Riley, D. (2007). MySpace to announce self-serve hyper targeted advertising network. TechCrunch (Nov. 4). At http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/04/myspace-to-announceself-serve-advertising-network/, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Shih, C. (2011). Beyond targeting: The convergence of social and advertising. Online Media Daily (Oct. 25). At http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/161149/ beyond-targeting-the-convergence-of-social-and-ad.html, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Counterargument Today is the new 1984: Big Brother is not only watching you – he is selling to you Tom Weir University of South Carolina, USA Welcome back to Oceania. It is really a shame that George Orwell left us before he had the opportunity to see the extent to which we are able to pry into people’s lives today. In 1984 (Orwell 1949) he envisioned “telescreens” that broadcast constant messages in support of the Party, but were also able to see into your living room and check up on you. We have Computers that we use to look at the world, but they are also able to look into our lives to see what we are doing, EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 170 Joe Bob Hester and Tom Weir buying, reading, watching, and thinking. The Ministry of Truth has been replaced by the Ministry of Marketing. Once the Party had taken over all aspects of life and was intent on eliminating all thoughts of individuality. Now, the Sellers have taken over all aspects of life and are intent on prying into our private lives to a degree we used to think was unimaginable. Once we learned that “Ignorance is strength,” never suspecting that the idea was ignorance for the consumer and strength for the Seller. Well, we are there again. Welcome home. The Present The United States Patent Office granted patent number 7,809,740 B2 to Yahoo! Inc. on Oct. 5, 2010. The patent was for a “Model for generating user profiles in a behavioral targeting system.” Below is the description of the system listed on the application: A behavioral targeting system determines user profiles from online activity. The system includes a plurality of models that define parameters for determining a user profile score. Event information, which comprises online activity of the user, are received at an entity. To generate a user profile score, a model is selected. The model comprises recency, intensity and frequency dimension parameters. The behavioral targeting system generates a user profile score for a target objective, such as brand advertising or direct response advertising. The parameters from the model are applied to generate the user profile score in a category. The behavioral targeting system has application for use in ad serving to online users. (Chung et al. 2007) A patent for a behavioral targeting system for advertisers? Is this a joke? We have gone around a great, dark corner and are forging headlong into an abyss unknown in our history. More about that later. Facebook and other less dominant social media sites have become useful appliances for millions of people. They are also monsters devouring the advertising budgets of thousands of marketers. Because users supply so much personal information, marketers can use these systems to target prospects to a previously unheard of level. That level of specificity in identifying the web navigation, personal likes and dislikes, and countless other variables of unsuspecting users has never been available to marketers before. Of course, the first response was elation – an opportunity to target at this level was a wonderful opportunity – but now it has become a concern (Fullerton et al. 2011). This extensive personal and behavioral targeting is bordering on (some would say extending beyond) a violation of individual privacy. There are 618 million active users of the social networking site, Facebook (Facebook 2012). More than half of them log on to the site on any given day. The average user has 130 friends, and is connected to 80 community pages, groups, and events. The amount of personal information willingly provided by users, either in their personal profile or in posts is astonishing, and because the company has access to all of that information, Facebook provides an unprecedented opportunity for advertisers to target prospects that they believe will be EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Hyper-Niche Markets and Advertising 171 receptive to their messages. Although Facebook does not share personal information of users with advertisers, the site allows them to search their immense database by location, demographics, likes, keywords, and any other information they hold. Not only that, but the search is capable of identifying individuals based on information that can be inferred from their profiles. This ability presents advertisers with the opportunity to target prospects based on their behavior. The resulting search provides advertisers with the estimated reach, and the site can deliver advertising messages to all, or to a subset of them. This situation has changed the way market segmentation is done, and it has certainly made millions of people open to receive advertising based on factors they can only guess at. The ethical implications are serious for marketers and consumers alike. Examining the way people use Facebook tells us a lot about how it has become a central part of their lives. The casual observer will conclude that writing brief notes on someone’s “wall,” or reviewing postings and photos from friends consume the vast majority of time spent on Facebook. But some studies indicate there may be more social benefit, including a relationship between usage and building social capital (Ellison et al. 2007). By 2010, 98 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 24 used some sort of social media, a larger percentage than any other age group (although 97 percent of adults 24–34 are so engaged). From there usage drops off, but 73 percent of adults over the age of 65 are using some sort of social media (Ellison et al. 2007). FaceBook dominates this environment, particularly in the younger age categories. But other social networking sites are increasingly getting into the game because advertisers want targeted contact with potential consumers. It is hard to overestimate the potential market. All the “friends” on Facebook have a personal profile that is searchable by advertisers, and increasingly those friends consist of parents, siblings, and members of extended families (Experian Marketing Services 2011). In Google’s free email program, Gmail, the contents of user messages are scanned for key words, with appropriate advertising appearing on subsequent log-ins. To me, this crosses the line. A study of privacy concerns of both Facebook and MySpace users demonstrated that the former had more faith both in the protection of their personal data and fellow members, and were more willing to share personal information (Dwyer et al. 2007). Whether Facebook actually does a good job in protecting privacy is yet to be seen. Facebook proudly cites its privacy policy in defense of accusations that nothing is really “private” in the conventional sense of the word. The site consults with what it refers to as a “global Safety Advisory Board” regarding the security of personal information (Facebook 2011). We are beginning to see a backlash against the infectious use of behavioral targeting through social networks sites. Facebook has been in discussions with the Federal Trade Commission about possible violations of their members’ personal information. Also, increasing anxiety has arisen about the service’s maintenance of a log of all the websites visited by members for the last 90 days, EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 172 Joe Bob Hester and Tom Weir although the company maintains users have the option of opting out of this feature (Arcohido 2011). Social science research is now beginning to show increasing concern among Facebook users about the privacy of their personal information. Questions have been raised about individual privacy concerns and misunderstandings about the visibility of personal information (Acquisti and Gross 2006). Further, research seems to be showing that trust and privacy concerns are less important in online relationships than in interpersonal ones (Dwyer et al. 2007). I recently asked students from four different colleges about their social media use. While the sample was not random, the 430 responders demonstrated strong Facebook use – to the tune of 99 percent. And, of those students, 94 had been involved in Facebook for three or more years. To get at expectations of privacy in dealings with others in the network, I asked participants if they had ever accepted a “friend” request from someone they did not know, and was surprised to find that 69 percent had done so. Slightly fewer than half (45%) reported that they believed the information they posted on Facebook was protected and private. One-third noted that someone had retrieved some personal information from their account without their permission at least once. Finally, when asked to rate their concern about being targeted by advertisers as a result of their personal information, 47 percent said they did not like the practice. At what point does the ability to collect personal information about a person become a violation of their personal space? Can we consider behavioral or personal targeting in this manner to be invasive at all? How is it different from an advertiser reaching potential consumers through a magazine that serves a particular lifestyle or interest group? There is a significant difference between placing advertising in a magazine directed to runners, and placing advertising only on the pages of Facebook users whom you have learned are runners through serendipitous examination of information they believed to be personal and (relatively speaking) confidential. There has long been an accepted practice to collect information about individual purchase patterns in order to make marketing decisions on a broad scale. Few people seem to object to a marketer noticing that a particular brand of cat food is favored more by women than men, and adjusting advertising to appeal more directly to this group. But that is distinctly different than the sort of targeting we are discussing. I often ask my advertising classes to answer this question: If I had all of your grocery receipts for six months, what could I tell about you? To think about this is enlightening for them because it lets them examine how much personal information really is available to marketers. Each time we conduct this exercise my students quickly determine that I would know their gender, relative age, eating habits, lifestyle, pet ownership, hair type (possibly color), and an entire range of other information they consider to be highly personal. When I ask them if they would be comfortable sharing all of that information with marketers, the response is almost universally negative. Guess what? You are sharing that, and more, every time you post to your Facebook account. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Hyper-Niche Markets and Advertising 173 The Future Be honest with me for a second. When was the last time you actually read through the privacy policy before you clicked the “I agree” button? You can’t remember? I can’t either. I don’t think it has ever happened. I doubt anyone has ever read the policy before agreeing to it. It is shocking, considering the amount of personal information that we are so willing to submit to people or organizations we do not know. We all have an expectation of privacy – rightly or wrongly – that allows us to do stupid things. We assume our privacy is safe, off limits to peering eyes and ears. But we are wrong. We rail about identity theft, but say nothing about having mountains of personal information stored somewhere we don’t know by people we don’t know or trust. The expectation of privacy is treated differently by younger versus older people. As people age, they tend to care more about privacy – perhaps because they have more to hide, perhaps because they become more cynical with age, or perhaps because they learn more about the ability of marketers to mine personal data. Many consumers continue to live a carefree life in Internet-world, oblivious to the fact that their every move is being watched and stored. It’s important to understand that we are moving toward a world in which there simply is no privacy at all, and the consequences are staggering. Marketers can and will learn anything about you they want to know. Your response might be that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. But think again. There are important implications to having your life spread-eagled all over the Internet. If you are an employer, you can easily find out all sorts of information about prospective employees. If you are a politician, or ever plan to be, you had better quickly become a lot more careful about what you post on your Facebook page. The government, school admissions offices, the Internal Revenue Service, and, yes, advertisers are all impacted by the freedom of information that floats through the ether. It appears that Orwell was right. Oceania is a nice place, after all. I know that no one will do anything shady with all of that information. I trust them: they like me. I am no longer an individual, which is fine with me. Who needs it? I don’t like to worry and think and have to find my own stuff. I will leave all of that to the Sellers. Freedom is slavery. References Acohido, B. (2011). Facebook tracking is under scrutiny. USA Today (Nov. 16). At http:// usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-11-15/facebook-privacy-trackingdata/51225112/1, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Acquisti, A. and Gross, R. (2006). Imagined communities: Awareness, information sharing, and privacy on the Facebook. In P. Golle and G. Danezis (eds.), Proceedings of 6th Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies. Cambridge: Robinson College, pp. 36–58. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 Copyright © 2013. Wiley-Blackwell. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 174 Joe Bob Hester and Tom Weir Chung, C. Y., Koran, J. M., Lin, L.-J., and Yen, H. (2007). U.S. Patent Application No. 20070239518, Class 705010000. Washington, DC: U.S. Patents and Trademark Office. Dwyer, C., Hiltz, S., and Passerini, K. (2007). Trust and privacy concern within social networking sites: A comparison of Facebook and MySpace. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Keystone Colorado, August 9–12 2007. At http://csis.pace.edu/∼dwyer/research/DwyerAMCIS2007.pdf, accessed Apr. 3, 2013. Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., and Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends”: Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(2007): 1143–1168. Experian Marketing Services (2011). The 2011 social media consumer trend and benchmark report. At http://www.experian.com/assets/simmons-research/brochures/2011social-media-consumer-report.pdf, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Facebook (2012). Key facts. At http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts, accessed Mar. 26, 2013. Fullerton, J., Kendrick, A., and Weir, T. (2011). Advertising student opinion of ethical issues – online behavioral targeting – controversial issues. Journal of New Communications Research 5(1): 61–76. Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. New York: Penguin. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/2/2020 10:09 PM via UNIV OF MINNESOTA - TWIN CITIES LIBRARIES AN: 604443 ; Carol J. Pardun.; Advertising and Society : An Introduction Account: s5240361 
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