Consumer Perceptions on the Privacy-Invasiveness of In-feed Advertisements

Sammanfattning: The rise in usage of the internet in general and social media in particular has spurred an increase in the amount of spending on digital marketing. This in turn has led to new and innovative ways of conducting marketing online, one of which is called in-feed advertising. Visually, in-feed ads share the same features as their surrounding content. In terms of function, these ads collect data from consumers’ online activities in order to offer personalized ad content. While this field of study has started to be explored in recent times, there are still major gaps in existing literature. In particular, little to no research has been conducted in the area of consumers’ perception of in-feed advertisement, with regards to privacy-invasiveness and consumers’ willingness to make personal information available online to marketers for in-feed ads. The purpose of this thesis is to research consumer perception of the privacy-invasive aspects of in-feed ads, and examine what happens when consumers’ knowledge of the privacy-invasive data collection methods increases. The research method used was a semi-controlled field experiment which gathered quantitative and qualitative data from the experiment participants through questionnaires and group-held discussions. Our main findings show that consumers accept -sometimes reluctantly- the privacy-invasive procedures deployed by marketers online due to the added benefits of receiving personalized content online. Consumers do express concerns over their internet privacy, but seem unwilling to take measures to prevent privacy-invasive procedures due to a perceived inevitability towards having online activities tracked.