Personalized ads have become a huge means for different apps to earn huge profits from. We see these types of ads on almost every platform now, different companies have said that these personalized ads allows the apps to know what their users are interested in and people like receiving such ads as it depicts the things they are the most interested about. According to the social media giant Facebook, personalized ads give people a much greater user experience and that these ads help people to discover new things and receive information from the brands they actually care about, but the surveys tell otherwise.
These ads are liked by only a small chunk of the users and not by everyone; they can be looked on as something that actually damages a society on a whole. These ads have spread misinformation about many things and have created certain barriers in our communities. These personalized ads make their ways into our newsfeed by keeping a track on our activities from our devices, by invading our privacies and then making profits out of it. That is how the whole system works.
YouGov and GlobalWitness conducted a survey in February of 2021 comprising of over 2000 social media users who use these platforms on a regular basis in France and Germany to know about how they feel of these ads in their online user experience. The results show that most of the people do not feel comfortable from the way these companies make profits by tracking their activities and with presenting them with targeted ads. YouGov asked people about the way they are targeted by advertisers every day and in what categories, and majority of the people felt not at all comfortable with these targeting categories and said that they think all of this shouldn’t even be allowed.
When asked if they want to receive such personalized ads, around 57 percent of the people said that they don’t want any political or commercial ads. 26 percent said that they only do not want targeted political ads while 11 percent said that they are comfortable with their personal data being used to give them targeted ads. In political ads category, 44 percent of the people believe that targeted political ads makes the democracy difficult. A huge part of such ads is that many people do not even realize the way their personal information is exploited to take out profits from it.
Tech companies should take the steps behind this to ensure that the personal information of their users aren’t exploited like this and should set strict limitations over it.
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These ads are liked by only a small chunk of the users and not by everyone; they can be looked on as something that actually damages a society on a whole. These ads have spread misinformation about many things and have created certain barriers in our communities. These personalized ads make their ways into our newsfeed by keeping a track on our activities from our devices, by invading our privacies and then making profits out of it. That is how the whole system works.
YouGov and GlobalWitness conducted a survey in February of 2021 comprising of over 2000 social media users who use these platforms on a regular basis in France and Germany to know about how they feel of these ads in their online user experience. The results show that most of the people do not feel comfortable from the way these companies make profits by tracking their activities and with presenting them with targeted ads. YouGov asked people about the way they are targeted by advertisers every day and in what categories, and majority of the people felt not at all comfortable with these targeting categories and said that they think all of this shouldn’t even be allowed.
When asked if they want to receive such personalized ads, around 57 percent of the people said that they don’t want any political or commercial ads. 26 percent said that they only do not want targeted political ads while 11 percent said that they are comfortable with their personal data being used to give them targeted ads. In political ads category, 44 percent of the people believe that targeted political ads makes the democracy difficult. A huge part of such ads is that many people do not even realize the way their personal information is exploited to take out profits from it.
Tech companies should take the steps behind this to ensure that the personal information of their users aren’t exploited like this and should set strict limitations over it.
