Too Clo for Comfort: A Study of the Effectiveness and Acceptability of Rich-Media Personalized Advertising Miguel Malheiros, Charlene Jennett, Snehalee Patel, Sacha Brostoff, M. Angela Sas
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT, UK
{m.malheiros, c.jennett, s.brostoff, a.sas}@cs.ucl.ac.uk, snehalee.patel.10@ucl.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
Online display advertising is predicted to make $29.53 billion this year. Advertirs believe targeted and personalized ads to be more effective, but many urs are concerned about their privacy. We conducted a study where 30 participants completed a simulated holiday booking task; each page showing ads with different degrees of personalization. Participants fixated twice as long when ads contained their photo. Participants reported being more likely to notice ads with their photo, holiday destination, and name, but also increasing levels of discomfort with increasing personalization. We conclude that greater personalization in ad content may achieve higher levels of attention, but that th
e most personalized ads are also the least acceptable. The noticeability benefit in using someone‟s photo to make them look at an ad may be offt by the privacy cost. As more personal data becomes available to advertirs, it becomes important that the trade-offs are considered.
Author Keywords
Targeted advertising; personalization; privacy.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.1.2 Ur/Machine Systems: Human Factors.
General Terms
Human Factors
INTRODUCTION
Display advertising (banner ads and pop-ups) accounts for approximately one third of the total online advertising market and is predicted to reach $29.53 billion this year [21]. Many urs are densitize
d to traditional display advertising and actively avoid looking at online banner ads [10]. Over time, respon rates to banner ads have fallen dramatically [15]. Techniques ud by advertirs to overcome this problem include targeted advertising and personalization. Targeted advertising refers to the practice where ads are matched to the ur‟s interest. The more relevant the ad is to the ur, the more attractive it is. Personalization refers to the inclusion of information in the ad content that identifies or characterizes the recipient. It is sometimes ud alongside targeting to further increa the appeal of an ad. The techniques have been found to achieve higher click-through rates [33] and in turn more sales. However, they also create ads which have the potential to be more invasive to urs, intruding on their privacy [31]. Yet there exists scope for even greater personalization of advertiments. Facebook, for example, is planning to allow companies to adverti products on urs‟ profiles [11]. What will happen to internet urs‟ perceptions of privacy should the more powerful techniques for personalization become common? Will increasingly personalized ads lead to incread revenues for advertirs and their clients, or might it lead to a still greater experience of privacy invasion, and rejection of products, rvices and sites hosting the ads?
We report a study that explored participants‟ respons to ads with varying degrees of personalization toward the individual recipient, including a newer type that incorporates personally
identifying information (PII) about the viewer within each ad (i.e. the participant‟s name and photograph). We first prent background on urs‟ perceptions of targeted advertising and personalization. We then describe the study where participants interacted with web pages with increasingly targeted and personalized ads. Their attention towards the ads was measured using eye-tracking while their perceptions were collected using questionnaires and interviews. The results show that greater personalization in ad content may achieve higher levels of attention, with participants spending almost twice as much time looking at an ad containing a photo of themlves than at a standard picture ad. However, increasing personalization also incread discomfort, with 80% of participants uncomfortable with their photos being ud in the ads. We conclude that advertirs should strive to identify high-value data items that can be ud to achieve …sweet spot‟ personalization that results in noticeable, interesting ads that are also comfortable for the ur, and avoid data items that may increa the noticeability of their ads at the expen of urs‟ comfort.
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CHI’12, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA.
BACKGROUND
Display Advertising
Targeted ads are mainly plain content text ads –such as Google‟s AdSen, which generates $6 billion in revenue [12]. The two most common forms of targeting are contextual and behavioral. Contextual advertising (CA) describes ads delivered bad on an automated matching of keywords from the content a ur is currently viewing with keywords for an advertiment. CA aims to complement the website content and relies on information collected in real-time. Behavioral advertising (BA) describes ads which are delivered bad on information collected about a ur‟s web browsing behavior over time, such as websites visited, topics viewed and arch engine queries. This data is ud to profile urs into interest categories (e.g. …golf enthusiast‟) and relevant ads are rved. Examples of BA ad networks include Google‟s Double Click, Yahoo! Network, AOL Advertising and Scientific Media.
Past rearch suggests that BA can improve the click-through rate (CTR) of an ad by as much as 670% [33]; and the action-through rates (ATR; percentage of ads resulting in sale) are more than do
uble tho of standard advertising, 6.8% and 2.8% respectively [4]. It is likely that targeted ads are more effective becau they are more relevant to urs. A strong correlation was found between urs liking an ad and its perceived relevance, tho who dislike advertising being the least likely to e any relevance in what they e [16].
There is also evidence to suggest that BA is more effective than CA. Studies conducted by advertising agencies found that the same ads received 17% more fixations in unrelated-content sites than related-content sites [20]; and the CTR was more than 100% higher for ads in unrelated-content sites, and the ATR was 19% higher, compared to related-content sites [26]. Such results could be due to the …surpri effect‟: when a ur looking for a product finds an ad on an unrelated site, s/he might react to the unexpected event by engaging with the ad [20, 26]. Another explanation is that contextual ads could suffer from the …clamor effect‟: when too many adverts for the same product try and catch the ur‟s attention, the ur might avoid looking at any of them and instead choo to stay focud on the editorial content [20, 26].
However, being rved more relevant adverts does not necessarily mean that urs will perceive targeted advertising positively – as can be en in Table 1, studies exploring the perceptions of urs have had mixed results. Reasons for disliking targeted advertising include perceived privacy c
女式西装osts. Urs dislike the idea of being followed, describing BA as …invasive‟ [16, 24]. This has
been termed the …creepiness factor‟, a n that someone has been …snooping‟ into a part of your life that should remain private [17]. Other perceived privacy costs
identified in the literature include:
Cookies being installed on the ur‟s computer
[27]; The storage of personal data wi thout the ur‟s
knowledge [16];
PII being attached to the ur‟s
Internet browsing [1]; Being labeled by advertirs in ways the ur considers
unfair [31];
Potential embarrassment to the ur if using a shared
computer [27];
Other companies having access to the ur‟s data
[16]; Data collected being ud for purpos other than advertising [27].
CA rais fewer objections than BA [27]; becau no tracking is involved, there are fewer risks associated with data storage or data sharing. The benefits
of targeted ads include:
Free access to ad-funded content [2, 27];
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A reduction in irrelevant ads [27];
A reduction in the cost of good rvices [27]; Decread arch times [27].
The Internet Advertising Bureau suggest that the benefit of ad-funded Internet rvices to the ur outweighs the privacy costs: they found that urs were only prepared to pay one-sixth of the total surplus gained to avoid advertising and personal information-usage nuisance [2]. Urs might argue, however, that it is not fair for advertirs to expect them to make such a trade-off. McDonald and Cranor [24] found that 69% believe privacy is a right, 61% think it is …extortion‟ to pay to keep their data private, and only 11% say they would pay to avoid ads. Factors that could help alleviate urs‟ privacy concerns include transparency and control. Rearch findings suggest that urs feel more comfortable with BA in situations where they are actively told when targeted ads are being shown [14, 27]. Urs are also more comfortable after finding out PII is not stored [1, 16] and that they have the option to opt-out [14, 16, 27].
天天模拟器Rich Media
Rich media - such as images, video and pop-ups – are increasingly being ud in display advertising. By making the ad highly visible relative to the website content, the ad is made harder for the ur to ignore. Pop-ups have been found to be more memorable than standard banner ads [9]. However, such advertising can also be experienced as disruptive becau it diverts the ur from their online
goals. When an ad is considered disruptive, negative attitudes can develop, affecting brand perception and leading to …ad avoidance ‟ [23]. The more important the task, the more disruptive the interruption is likely to be perceived.
With the growth of targeted ads, it is possible that advertirs will try to combine targeting with high visibility. Only one study h as investigated urs‟ possible respon to this approach. Goldfarb and Tucker [12] conducted a large-scale field experiment on 2,892 web advertising campaigns, comparing CA campaigns, rich media campaigns, and campaigns that did both. They conclude that urs‟ purcha intent incre ad when CA and rich media were ud as parate strategies; but when the strategies were combined, urs‟ purcha intent decread . They suggest that urs may tolerate CA more than other ads becau they potentially provide uful information; however, when such ads are made highly visible, this has a negative effect becau it increas the ur‟s awareness of being targeted and their perceptions of being manipulated by advertirs.
Personalization
Personalization is said to increa the appeal of an ad, becau the ur is more likely to assume that there is a match between his/her lf and the product [3]. However, highly personalized messag
es can also have negative effects, depending on the degree to which the personal information ud in the message uniquely identifies or characterizes the recipient. This is referred to as …personalization reactance‟ - when the ur feels constrained in the n of being too identifiable or obrvable by the firm. White et al. [32] suggest that three factors influence personalization reactance: the level of personalization, whether or not justification for personalization is prent, and the perceived utility of the rvice . In their study, they ud highly personalized email ads that addresd the customer by their name, state of residence and movie preferences. They found that when the perceived utility of the rvice was low, participants experienced personalization reactance in respon to highly personalized messages that were not justified, resulting in lower click-through intentions. By contrast, when the perceived utility of the rvice was high, the justification of personalization was less important becau highly personalized messages were less likely to elicit reactance . Only one rearch study has investigated the effects of targeted display advertising and personalization. Tucker et al. [30] conducted a randomized field experiment where they compared the CTRs of two different Facebook ad formats, before and after the introduction of improved privacy controls. In the targeted and personalized ad format, the ad explicitly mentioned the ur‟s undergraduate institution, or the name of a celebrity the ur was a …fan‟ of, e.g. …As a [undergraduate institution
name] graduate, you know that strong ‟ In the targeted and non-personalized format, the message referred to a broader ur characteristic, e.g. …You know that strong ‟ They found that after Facebook‟s introduction of improved privacy controls, urs were twice as likely to click the targeted personalized ads. As a result, they suggest that if sites are successful at reassuring consumers that they are in control of their privacy, personalization of online ads can be ud to generate higher CTR.
Compared to email personalization, relatively low levels of personalization are currently ud in targeted display ads. In particular, PII has not yet been ud to personalize targeted display ads. PII has been formally defined as …information that can be ud to distinguish or trace an individual‟s identity‟; examples include a person‟s name and photographic images [22]. Rearch studies suggest that PII can make a message more noticeable. For example, in psychology, the famous …cocktail party effect‟ describes how a person can hear his/her own name being said amongst many voices in a crowded room [6, 25]. More recently, it has been suggested that people have prioritized processing for their own name and their own face [29], and that people have difficulty dingaging their attention from lf-referential stimuli [7, 8].
The majority of advertirs involved in BA claim not to keep people‟s real names in their databas a
nd often cite this layer of anonymity as a reason why BA should not be considered intrusive [28]. However, it is reported that some companies, such as Rapleaf, do keep PII [28]. Also there is evidence to suggest that advertirs have access to PII, even if they are not using it: veral studies have found that there is …information leakage‟ from online social networks to third-party advertirs, which can include PII and xual-orientation [13, 18, 19].
吃什么下奶最快最多最有效Another relevant finding is that it is a common belief amongst Internet urs that advertirs have access to PII.
A recent study found that over 30% of urs believed that sites they are registered with (e.g. Facebook, Google, Microsoft Live, Yahoo) share PII with advertirs without their connt; and more than half of urs (52%) believe that their PII are attached to tracking activity [1]. Following on from this, we question how would urs respond if advertirs were open about having access to PII, and PII was ud to personalize advertising content? Rearch Aims
The effects of personalization and the u of rich-media in TA have been under-investigated in previous rearch. In this paper we ask: what will happen to internet u rs‟ perceptions of privacy when the powerful advertising techniques become more common? This question gains relevance
now that companies like Facebook plan to leverage their urs‟ profiles to adverti products [11]. In particular, we wanted to explore and compare participants‟
reactions to the following types of ads:
Untargeted rich media ads;
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Targeted rich media ads;
Personalized rich media ads, using PII of first name and photo.
Ur studies investigating people‟s opinions of targeted ads have tended to be survey-bad, asking participants to rate their level of agreement with various statements [15, 23, 13]. We argue however, that how a person feels about the practice of targeting might be different to how they feel when prented with targeted ads in an actual browsing situation. To explore peopl e‟s respons to our ad types, we designed a study where participants were given the task of booking a holiday. As the participant went through the booking process, they were expod to ads that became increasingly personal –on the first page they were prented with standard ads, on the cond page they were prented with ads that targeted them bad on their holiday booking input, and on the final page they were prented with personalized ads that ud their name and photo in the ad content. In particular, we wanted to understand the following rearch questions:
RQ1. Which ads did participants notice most / least? RQ2. Which ads did participants find the most comfortable / uncomfortable?
RQ3. Which ads were participants most / least likely to take an interest in?
METHOD
Participants
There were 30 participants (15 male, 15 female). Their ages ranged from 19 to 55 years (mean age = 28 years, SD = 10.1). 22 were university students and 8 were university staff, recruited from an opportunity sample.
Stimuli
A travel website (…Flyaway‟) was created using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The website was split into three pages, each page containing four banner adverts (top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right). The adverts were all the same size (221 by 336 pixels) and consisted of text and rich media. See Figure 1 for examples of the adverts.锯割
Page 1 allowed the participant to lect their journey information (destination, journey type, departure date and time, return date and time) and a ries of additional questions to …qualify for our exclusive offers‟ (relationship status, do you own a car, do you have travel insurance, age group). The ads on this page were general ads about holidays and flights. See Figure 1, top left ad, for an example.
Figure 1. Examples of ‘Flyaway’ ads. Top left: a general holiday ad. Top right: a holiday ad bad on holiday lection ‘Dubai’. Bottom left: an ad bas ed on the age lection ‘18-34’. Bottom right: an anti-aging cream ad using t he participant’s
first name and modified photo
Page 2 allowed the participant to lect the number of tickets and to enter their name, address and payment details. The ads on this page were targeted using the holiday destination the participant cho on Page 1 (e.g. local hotels, restaurants) and their answers to the additional questions on Page 1 (e.g. dating website, car loan, travel insurance). See Figure 1, top right, for an example.
Page 3 confirmed the booking and informed the participants that their booking reference would be emailed to them shortly. The ads on this page were targeted using the age range the participant cho on Page 1 (e.g. clubbing, life cover), addresd the participant by their first name, and ud the participant‟s photo (both modified and unmodified) to show them what they could look like with / without a particular product (e.g. hair salon, anti-wrinkle cream). See Figure 1, bottom left and right ads, for examples. The participant‟s photo was obtained from the university databa when the participant signed up for the study and was modified using Photoshop. The modifications were chan
出厂设置在哪里ging the hair-style in one version, and artificially aging the appearance of the individual by 40 years in another version. Apparatus
The website was displayed on a Dell desktop computer using Internet Explorer 7. Eye movements were measured with a Tobii X50 eye tracker and Tobii Studio 2.0.4 software. Total fixation duration (TFD) was collected in order to gauge noticing of the stimuli ads (RQ1), with longer durations indicating ads that had been noticed more. The post-task interview was recorded using an audio recorder.
Materials
A post-task questionnaire was created that consisted of 13 statements, which participants had to rate how on a 5-point scale, indicating their level of agreement. Q1 was a general statement, where participants rated their awareness of the website‟s ads. The 12 questions that followed then focud on four of the targeted ads: holiday destination, age, name and photo. Participants were asked to rate each of the ad types for how likely they were to notice the ad (RQ1), how comfortable they felt with the ad (RQ2) and how likely they were to take an interest in the ad (RQ3).
Procedure
The experimenters applied for permission to conduct the study through the university‟s ethical review process. Permission was granted to u the participant‟s university ID photo (from a publicly accessible page) and to display modified versions of it to the participant during the study. The study took place in a usability lab and took approximately 30 minutes per participant. It was advertid as an experiment to investigate …Perceptions of a Travel Website.‟ Participants signed a connt form detailing the procedure of the experiment, what equipment would be ud, informed that the data would be held in accordance with local data protection law, and of their right to withdraw from the experiment at any time without conquence. However, participants were not told that the focus of the study would be the website‟s adverts, and that their photo would be ud for a subt of the ads. Participants were asked to book a flight to a destination of their choice and to …talk aloud‟ about their thoughts of the website. While they did the task, eye tracking and video recording were ud to record their reactions. Once the task was completed, the rearcher reviewed the Tobii screen recording with the participant and this time asked participants to specifically talk about what they thought of the ads on each page.
Next participants were asked to complete a post-study questionnaire, which asked them to rate the ads with regard to how noticeable, comfortable and likely to elicit interest they were. They then took
part in an interview exploring their perceptions of targeted and personalized advertising in the context of their prior experience.
At the end of the study participants were fully debriefed and informed that the photos of themlves would not be published, and that all data relating to them from
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