{"id":4549,"date":"2020-11-03T12:14:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-03T17:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/?p=4549"},"modified":"2020-11-03T13:06:46","modified_gmt":"2020-11-03T18:06:46","slug":"ad-preference-and-identity-reality-or-representation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/ad-preference-and-identity-reality-or-representation\/","title":{"rendered":"Ad Preference and Identity: Reality or Representation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Personalized advertisements and there accuracy have been a hot topic for the past couple years.\u00a0 As someone who often experiences the phenomenon of thinking about a product and it appearing in an ad while I’m surfing the web,\u00a0 I find it both convenient and unsettling that websites are becoming so effective at targeting audiences.\u00a0 It makes it hard to believe that the phone isn’t listening to you.\u00a0 Or is it?<\/p>\n

I admit that my phone has become an attachment of my body at this point.\u00a0 \u00a0After opening my phone activity for the past 10 days, the average screen time per day was 8 hours.\u00a0 The most used app was Youtube, which I had used for a staggering 45 hours during the 10 day period.\u00a0 I like to keep videos playing in the background during the day, whether it be while exercising, cooking, etc.\u00a0 For my data entry, I decided to look at the ad personalization that Google had given to me.\u00a0 Google has a list of ad categories that it believed to be preferable for me.\u00a0 This list is generated from my profile and activity.\u00a0 As I sifted through the list, most of the categories seemed accurate, such as comedy and video games.\u00a0 There were occasional categories in the list that seemed completely inaccurate such as patio\/lawn care or swimming.\u00a0 This data is based on past activity, so although I may have clicked on a video in the past I may have no interest in the topic.<\/p>\n

In order to measure the accuracy of Youtube’s digital identity for me, I pulled up the ad personalization that Facebook, a website I use much less, had documented for me since I created the account in 2009.\u00a0 As expected, Facebook’s list was much longer and more broad.\u00a0 It also includes specific things such as sports teams, actors or businesses.\u00a0 The list is made from my profile and pages\/ads I have clicked in the past, so the range varies greatly.\u00a0 \u00a0There are too many to include in this post.<\/p>\n

For both Google and Facebook, my identity was based on my activity on the platform.\u00a0 Therefore, all the site can gather is what I prefer when using that specific platform.\u00a0 The fact that I use Youtube more frequently enables it to be more accurate than Facebook.<\/p>\n

This data could be divided into two categories, that which is accurate and inaccurate.\u00a0 Just going off of my clicks,\u00a0 both sites will not be able to decipher between my interests and disinterests.\u00a0 I may click on some subjects more than others, but the existence of a click on a video or ad implies interest.\u00a0 If it were possible to look at every click I’ve made on both sites and divide them into an interest and disinterest, my digital identity be more accurate.<\/p>\n

The limitation of the platform of basing your identity off of usage is the most obvious.\u00a0 Both websites can only analyze your activity, so if you aren’t active your identity will be inaccurate.\u00a0 In many ways this data used to be considered private, but I would argue that this data is now public and the only private data you own is that which isn’t recorded.<\/p>\n

Recently, a class action lawsuit was filed against Google for tracking user data when using incognito mode.\u00a0 Although it is advertised to be a private browser mode, websites were able to mine information from users while using the setting.\u00a0 This is just another reason why what used to be considered private data is in fact the opposite.<\/p>\n

Phone Activity<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

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youtube<\/p>\n

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facebook<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Personalized advertisements and there accuracy have been a hot topic for the past couple years.\u00a0 As someone who often experiences the phenomenon of thinking about a product and it appearing in an ad while I’m surfing the web,\u00a0 I find it both convenient and unsettling that websites are becoming so effective at targeting audiences.\u00a0 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2595,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4571,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions\/4571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}