Psychological Targeting

 

According to Howard Luck Gossage; “Nobody reads ads People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.". In today's post, you'll understand psychological targeting, its maleficts and its benefits.

Psychological targeting is the practice of showing people the right ads, news, and content based on their personality. 

Pros:

- It only shows you products that interest you 

- It's easier to find where to buy the products that you want/need

- It helps you save money: If you only see ads about things that you truly want the chances that you dislike a product and end up having it are lower 

- It is good for the advertisers to get more customers

Cons:

- It can persuade people to do things that will not benefit them: For example, online casino ads will appear to people who are likely to get addicted to gambling

- Promotes consumerism: Ic can make you buy things you think are cool but you don't need, or different versions of things you already have

- It manipulates people's behavior

- It may support bias.

Some networks, like Google, Facebook, etc. track your activity to create a profile based on what you searched. 

It is even possible to see this profile on Google. Here's how you can do that:

1. Log in to your Google account. 

2. Go to "Privacy and Personalisation"

3. Then, under the "Data and Privacy, you see an "Ad personalization" section. Click on "Ad personalization" and you see the profile Google created based on your activity.

For example, here's my profile:

    On that page you can also personalize your ads, choosing the types of products and brands you'd like to see and the frequency you see each one of them, In addition, you can choose to have personalized content or not. 

How to beat up the negative effects of psychological targeting?

- Make sure you truly need a product before buying it

- Ask people around if it is a good idea to try something you saw in an ad or look for it online

- If you don't feel comfortable about psichological targeting, look for browsers, apps, etc where you can turn off 

Works Cited

cjbs_admin. “How Effective Is Psychological Targeting in Advertising? What We Can Learn about You from Just One Click. - News & Insight .” Cambridge Judge Business School, 13 May 2020, www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2017/how-effective-is-psychological-targeting-in-advertising/.

Rusen, Ciprian Adrian. “See Your Google Ads Profile and What Google’s Advertising Knows about You.” Digital Citizen, Digital Citizen Romania, 8 Mar. 2022, www.digitalcitizen.life/what-google-advertising-knows-about-you/.