Targeted Digital Ads and Their Creepiness

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1:00The last show with David Cooper. Do you ever get the feeling that the internet knows you a little bit too well? It's not just recommending things. It's lurking, watching you, connecting the dots, and then suddenly serving you ads that feel a bit too psychic for your comfort. Researchers call that feeling creepiness and do consumers like it. Do you like it? Let's dig into that with someone who's researched this area. He's a marketing professor at the University of Byrne and Switzerland. And his name is Harley Kromer. Harley, welcome in, thanks for joining me. Yeah, hello David, thanks for having me. Let's start with a very relatable moment. I search for something once, maybe it's sneakers. And then suddenly the internet is following me around, offering me targeted sneakers ads. And it starts to feel a little bit odd. How often does this happen to people online? Well, it's happened all the time. And I think that feeling that we observe with many brands, many consumers, is exactly what drew us in.

2:01So I think a lot of people had such moments. And now with digitization and AI even more so. So the brands, they personalize their ads. And we think, wait, how did they know that? And we felt that the marketers and their researchers talked a lot about privacy and personalization. But no one really understood what's the actual emotional experience that people have when they feel something is creepy. And we wanted to understand what makes that feeling happen. Well, how it unfolds. And what does it do to the brand? So we wanted to take a closer look at deep dive to really understand what is creepiness. So what happens when a company tries to give me, quote, helpful personalization and then it crosses into the, okay, that's creepy territory. What happens to me in my mind? We want to understand how this emotion itself evolves. But we also want to understand the consequences, potential negative consequences for the brand.

3:02And we found that can be quite problematic. That consumers feel like someone is stalking me. It's intrusive and there's reactants towards the brand. So if you feel creepy, you feel something is odd, something is wrong here. And we found also in our research that, well, this can have negative implications for the brand. That people have negative feelings towards the brands as a consequence and me even avoid the brand. So it's on the one hand, we have positive benefits of personalization. But you talk, your vacuum cleaner doesn't work anymore. And then you get personalized ads from Dyson, for example. So there's a potential benefit that you say, oh, great. Now I can watch the ad. But on the other hand, people feel, oh, that's creepy. And maybe then they move on and transfer this negative feeling towards the brand and don't even buy it. So there's a trade-off, positive and negative aspects. And so far, everyone, the researchers have tried to understand

4:02the positive aspects. And we said, let's take a look at the dark side of it. What's other risks, basically? And does it depend more on how I perceive it? For example, if I'm typing to someone about a vacuum that broke and then I get receive a targeted ad and I don't put two and two together, I'm like, great, I want that. But if I put two and two together and I feel surveilled, then it's got a negative impact. So is it more about me than it is the fact that this technology exists at all? Well, I think that's something so far, the researchers didn't fully understand it. What's the intra-psychic process? And that's what we wanted to understand. And we did several studies and experiments to better understand what's the actual process in the mind of a consumer, because it is invasive. And then what, how does the emotion of creeping actually occur? And we are better understand the actual occurrence. How does it evolve the emotional? Then marketers could also say, what could they do that it doesn't feel creepy anymore?

5:03So that's what we also to understand. On the one hand, you want to personalize, but how can you avoid that is perceived as creepy? What could you do? That's something we try to find out. So walk me through some of these findings, some of these experiments in this territory. Yeah, great. Maybe we can just start with the first study. There we used a student example of nearly 500 students and we showed them different kinds of scenarios where there is this digital personalization. Ads basically highly personalized. And then we controlled for two control conditions. So we said, we used, for example, situations like voice assistance, smartphones, location-based marketing. And then everyone saw a personalized ad for the same headphone, brand. And then we measured the ambiguity. How does it feel ambiguous? The intrusive surveillance, if you feel like stalked. And we measured by a self-report, if the consumers feel uneasy

6:05and maybe even show reactants. And in this first study, we found that both this ambiguity, like is it good or bad? And they stalking the intrusive surveillance. This predicted the uneasiness. And this uneasiness, this feeling of uneasiness, then predicted the reactants, the negative emotions towards the brand. So put it, well, let's put it in rather plain language. When people felt an ad was hard to explain and a bit like spying, they became uncomfortable. And they wanted to resist it. That was the idea. That was the first study to have the basic effect. Basically see, yes, this spying feels bad. And they feel uncomfortable. That was the first basic study, basically. And it confirms what I think a lot of us feel when we get these ads. Now, is there a way for companies to counter this side note? I love that you introduced kittens into some of your work. Yeah, I think that was also in another study where we said,

7:06where we took, in the second study, we wanted to see if it's the same for all consumers. There were also differences. Well, in the third study, we also looked at different products. And in a fourth study, basically, how can companies fix this? And there, we used North, more than 700 North American consumers. And we used an augmented reality billboard scenario and compared interventions by the brands. And basically, there was transparency. One intervention, they said, okay, we are basically surveilling you. It was quite transparent. That it is personalized. It was transparent to consumers. The second intervention that they said, we have good intentions by ensuring the good intentions. A third intention was to give a discount, a lower price. They say, we individualize this and you get a discount. Another one was a monetary compensation.

8:06We say, well, we personalize it and you get some money back. And then was positive emotional cue. We said, and the idea was, because we followed up on Taliban, there were Taliban fighters who showed pictures with the Kalashnikovs and kitten. And it's also a bit creepy to see those fighters. And we basically said, okay, maybe we should also introduce such a positive emotional cue like kitten pictures. While they have this individualized ant. And the final one was a charitable donation message. We say, we give some funding for charitable donation. And it was quite interesting, the main finding. So basically, none of these interventions were changed to initial appraisal that it is ambiguous. But the people still had the creepy reaction at first. So that was very hard to undo. But only two interventions really worked that it didn't feel so creepy afterwards to offer money

9:07and the emotional cues. But still it felt creepy, but it didn't result in reactants. So we thought brands could individualize. And at the same time use emotions. This hides the fact that it doesn't have so much, still a little bit creepy, but it doesn't feel doesn't have such negative consequence. So there are certain interventions to make this feel less creepy. I suppose kittens are involved in one. But is it non-acting creepy? Isn't that the goal here? Or is it just to get away with it for companies? Yeah, I think basically the companies want to individualize so they can better sell, basically, because that's the point. If you receive, you as a consumer, receive that really has a benefit for you, and that's certainly been personalized. Overall, even though it's a little bit creepy, you would run, would still buy it. That's basically our message. If you personalize, it gets a little bit creepy, but if you use emotions, then you can still sell. And that's the final goal in marketing to sell. Well, I don't know how I feel about that as a consumer,

10:08but it's good information to have for sellers, and I think it really digs into why we feel creepy when we get these targeted ads. Harley Kromer is a marketing professor at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Harley, it's been fun chatting with you. Thank you for joining me. Yeah, thank you, and have a great weekend. Thank you. Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you, and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Spring's calling. Ross, work your magic.