Surprise! Facebook’s ad targeting makes people uncomfortable, study says

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It turns out that most people aren’t actually comfortable with Facebook’s ad targeting practices.

That may sound like an obvious conclusion in the wake of Cambridge Analytica and numerous other privacy scandals, but new research makes clear just how much people dislike the mechanics of Facebook’s ad platform.

A new survey from Pew Research, which surveyed 963 adult Facebook users, found that 51 percent are uncomfortable with the social network’s practice of sorting users into categories for advertising purposes. 

Some context: A big part of Facebook’s multibillion dollar ad machine is its ability to automatically categorize its 2 billion users into groups that advertisers can then target. There are hundreds of ad categories, ranging from broad characteristics like demographic information, to more specific traits, such as whether you recently started a relationship or plan on buying a car. Facebook, like other social networks, lets you view what groups it’s sorted you into and opt out of them, but the option to do so is buried within it ad preference settings. 

Given the complexity to even find the page, it’s not altogether surprising, then, that Pew found that 74 percent of people surveyed had no idea the social network had ever sorted them into these lists. (In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the company plans to make ad settings easier to navigate in the future.) 

Moreover, just 59 percent of respondents found these lists to be accurate representations of themselves, which may have contributed to their overall discomfort, according to Lee Rainie, one of the authors of the report. 

“Of people were were relatively happy with the way they were characterized, they were they were also more likely to think this [the ad targeting] was okay. And if they weren’t happy with how they were characterized, they were less likely to be happy with the way things came out,” Rainie said.

The study, the first time Pew has conducted a survey specifically on Facebook’s ad targeting, highlights how controversial Facebook’s core business model has become in the wake of Cambridge Analytica and other privacy scandals. While critics have asked Mark Zuckerberg to consider a paid, ad-free version of Facebook, he and other executives have long maintained that users prefer ads that are personalized to their interests.

“What we found is that even though some people don’t like ads, people really don’t like ads that aren’t relevant. And while there is some discomfort for sure with using information in making ads more relevant, the overwhelming feedback that we get from our community is that people would rather have us show relevant content there than not,” Zuckerberg said during a Senate hearing last year. 

In a statement, Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne echoed that sentiment. “We want people to see better ads – it’s a better outcome for people, businesses, and Facebook when people see ads that are more relevant to their actual interests. 

“One way we do this is by giving people ways to manage the type of ads they see. Pew’s findings underscore the importance of transparency and control across the entire ad industry, and the need for more consumer education around the controls we place at people’s fingertips.” 

The Pew study didn’t directly ask survey takers whether they liked their Facebook ads or not, but Rainie noted that the survey is generally in line with previous findings that people are uncomfortable with ad tracking.

“More Americans than not say the whole idea of targeting or tracking is something that just, you know, sort of inherently makes them uncomfortable. So this this research kind of speaks to some of that.”