“Do you like cookies?” Adolescents' skeptical processing of retargeted Facebook-ads and the moderating role of privacy concern and a textual debriefing

Abstract

Adolescents are regularly exposed to commercial messages on social networking sites. There is scant knowledge of how they interact with marketing communications on these social platforms. This study examines how advertising on Facebook is associated with adolescents' ad skepticism, and how this influences their purchase intentions. Also, the moderating role of privacy concern and a textual debriefing about the nature of the advertising technique are investigated. In total, 363 adolescents aged 16-18 years participated in an experimental study.The results show that, in general, retargeted Facebook ads (compared to non-retargeting) lead to higher purchase intentions. However, when textual debriefing is provided or for adolescents with a high privacy concern, skeptical attitude toward retargeting increases, which in turn decreases purchase intentions. These research findings hold some important implications for actors from different fields of expertise, such as policy makers, practitioners and educators.

The impact of regulatory focus on adolescents’ evaluation of targeted advertising on social networking sites

“…However, targeting seems to be a medal with two sides. Past academic research on the effectiveness of targeted advertising revealed two opposite conclusions (Ham 2016;Maslowska, Smit, and van den Putte 2016;Zarouali et al 2017). On one hand, targeting generates more favourable consumer responses as it increases the personal relevance of an advertisement by adjusting it to the interests and preferences of consumers (e.g.…”

“Everything under control?”: Privacy control salience influences both critical processing and perceived persuasiveness of targeted advertising among adolescents

“…These feelings of privacy intrusion might then lead to what has been referred to as reactance, or experiencing a loss of control and threat to autonomy and freedom of choice (Brehm, 1989). Reactance can eventually result in negative feelings and responses toward targeted advertising (Boerman et al, 2017;Zarouali et al, 2017). This logic might thus explain why SNSs, such as Facebook, rarely put their institutional privacy-enhancing tools in the spotlights, even though they are -sometimes-available.…”

“…As they spend most of their days with SNSs, it is of great relevance to arrive at an accurate observation and explanation of the role of advertising on SNSs in their daily lives. However, as shown by Zarouali et al (2017), adolescents do not engage in critical reflection on targeted advertising, unless they are exposed to a cue that triggers their critical elaboration. Without such a cue, they might be a consumer group at risk of unwanted and undesired persuasion effects.…”

“…Importantly, these ads take the form of an ordinary (organic) post as they adopt the format and style of the SNS (Aguirre, Roggeveen, Grewal, & Wetzels, 2016). Recent studies indicated that adolescents are not sophisticated decoders when it comes to interpreting these embedded sponsored posts as commercial attempts (Lawlor, Dunne, & Rowley, 2016;Zarouali, Ponnet, Walrave, & Poels, 2017). This issue has recently been the subject of heightened public and academic concerns and is mainly fueled by questions on the fairness or appropriateness of commercial actors' access to and use of adolescents' personal information for advertising purposes (van Reijmersdal, Rozendaal, Smink, Noort, & Buijzen, 2017).…”

“…In the case of advertising on Facebook, an important element is that ads are targeted based on the personal data of users. Unless they are informed properly, the latter might be perceived as scary and inappropriate by adolescents as they might feel that their privacy has been breached by this advertising practice (Walrave, Poels, Antheunis, Van den Broeck, & Noort, 2016;Zarouali et al, 2017). Therefore, an effective cue might not necessarily be one that simply indicates that a particular message is advertising (i.e., conveying the persuasive intent); but may rather be one that informs adolescents about the targeting process including the use of personal data and reassures them that they have -to a certain degree-control over this process (e.g., the possibility to report or hide the ad, to control the amount of personal information being used, etc.)…”