Too much information!? Examining the impact of different levels of transparency on consumers’ evaluations of targeted advertising
Abstract
Online behavioral advertising is widely employed across the Internet. To mitigate the lack of transparency in tailored advertising and increase the acceptance of behavioral advertising, numerous platforms have adopted transparency measures by, for example, providing short explanations to users. We examine to what degree different levels of transparency, operationalized as degrees of detail, delivered through advertising explanations impact consumers’ evaluations of behavioral targeted advertising and their trust in the platform presenting the ad. Empirically, we relied on an online experiment involving 174 Facebook users. Results showed that ad explanations with a medium level of detail led to more favorable advertising evaluations among users compared to ad explanations with a high level of detail.
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The level of detail of an advertisement on Facebook is not directly correlated with participants' trust in the Facebook platform as a whole.
“And yet, another study found that the level of detail of an advertisement on Facebook was not directly correlated with participants' trust in the Facebook platform as a whole [23].”
From What Do We Mean When We Talk about Trust in Social Media? A Systematic Review (2023) · cites this paper as [23]
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- Authors
- Dogruel, L.
- Affiliations
- Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Dogruel, Leyla
- ORCID
- Dogruel, Leyla
- Venue
- Communication Research Reports
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-10-20
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 383-392
- ISSN
- 0882-4096 (ISSN-L)
- 1746-4099
- OpenAlex
- W2988247000
- Cited by
- 27
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 3
- FWCI
- 4.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Communication Research Reports (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Marketing and Social Media
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
- Keywords
- behavioral advertising, targeted advertising, transparency, advertising acceptance, consumer evaluation, platform trust, Facebook, online advertising
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