Those ads are likely peddling lower-quality goods.
 | By Suein Hwang Business, Economics and Technology Editor, Opinion |
I've fallen for Facebook's ads before. Sitting in my closet is a white turtleneck and a sleeveless black dress that were magically pitched to me online at the very moment I was looking for those items. |
Of course, I knew it wasn't magic. I knew Facebook had been silently following me as I clicked around the web, figured out what I was looking for and then served me up an advertiser who sold a similar item. But now I also know I may have been had. |
From the very early days, the ad industry pitched this kind of invasive internet surveillance as being beneficial for both the advertiser and the consumer. The advertiser gets to spend its dollars exactly where they're most effective, and the targeted consumers get exactly what they're looking for. As it turns out, the reality is that only one party is really benefiting, and it isn't the consumer. |
That's the sobering conclusion that the Times Opinion contributing writer Julia Angwin comes to in her latest piece. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Virginia Tech studied the consumer welfare implications of targeted ads and found that the products pitched to people online were usually lower quality and more expensive than products that appeared in a simple web search. The researchers were so taken aback by the result that they repeated the study. Same result. No wonder a seam in my white turtleneck is already coming apart. |
Of course, in addition to selling us higher-priced, lower-quality goods, micro-targeting is also damaging democracy by decimating traditional news publishers and allowing the delivery of politically divisive messages. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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