About two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers — and that number rises once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements, according to a new survey from professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley.
The professors say they believe the study, released on Wednesday, is the first independent, nationally representative telephone survey on behavioral advertising.
The topic may be technical, but it has become a hot political issue. Privacy advocates are telling Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that tracking of online activities by Web sites and advertisers has gone too far, and the lawmakers seem to be listening. Representative Rick Boucher, a Democrat, wrote in an article for The Hill last week that he planned to introduce privacy legislation. And David Vladeck, head of consumer protection for the FTC, has signaled that he will examine data privacy issues closely.
Marketers are arguing that advertising supports free online content. Major advertising trade groups in July proposed some measures that they hoped would fend off regulation, like a clear notice to consumers when they were being tracked.
The data in this area, however, has been largely limited to company-financed research or Internet-based research, which survey experts say they believe is not representative of all Americans. So the study — among the first independent surveys to examine this issue — has attracted widespread interest.
“This research is going to ignite an intense debate on both sides of the Atlantic on what the appropriate policy should be,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the privacy group Center for Digital Democracy, which did not work on the study.
The study’s authors hired a survey company to conduct interviews with 1,000 adult Internet users. The interview, which lasted about 20 minutes, included questions like “Please tell me whether or not you want the Web sites you visit to give you discounts that are tailored to your interests.” The results were later adjusted to reflect Census Bureau patterns in categories like sex, age, population density and telephone usage.
Tailored ads in general did not appeal to 66 percent of respondents. Then the respondents were told about different ways companies tailor ads: by following what someone does on the company’s site, on other sites and in offline places like stores.
The respondents’ aversion to tailored ads increased once they learned about targeting methods. In addition to the original 66 percent that said tailored ads were “not OK,” an additional 7 percent said such ads were not OK when they were tracked on the site. An additional 18 percent said it was not OK when they were tracked via other Web sites, and an additional 20 percent said it was not OK when they were tracked offline.
The survey company also asked about customized discounts and customized news. Fifty-one percent of respondents said that tailored discounts were OK, and 58 percent said that customized news was fine.
On the advertising question, there was not a big difference between age groups. Marketers often use teenagers’ behavior on Facebook as anecdotal evidence that they do not mind handing over information. But 55 percent of respondents from 18 to 24 objected to tailored advertising.
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