The Ethics of Target Marketing

In our reading of Weapons of Math Destruction, we learned a little more about how advertisers will categorize people based on what they know about them. Some categories include sex and/or gender expression, age, location, education, income, interests and hobbies, and political and religious affiliations. They will try to discover our habits, hopes, fears, desires, relationships, and points of pain so that they can send a message that will trigger us into making a decision, and thus succeed in hauling in another paying customer. They are able to find out all of this information mainly based on what we do online.

In our in-class discussion on Monday, I posed the question of what ethics marketing and advertising companies actually follow when creating targeting ads. Reflecting a bit more on that question myself, I found this cool article: https://www.bluelaserdigital.com/ethical-target-advertising/ that talks about the no-nos of target marketing and what audiences they shouldn't be fishing for. They also gave three methods for how to engage in ethical target marketing, because like Merrika had mentioned, some target ads are actually helpful to what we need. Some of those methods included having companies perform an in-depth analysis of their competitors and their marketing strategies, making sure their ads follow federal privacy laws, and working with knowledgeable marketing agencies to ensure you avoid controversy and charges of unethical behavior.

I think if most companies tried to be mindful of some of those methods, they could still successfully use targeting advertisements but wouldn't run into any ethical issues like Facebook did back in 2016 with that political silo grouping.



Comments

  1. Taylor LindellSeptember 21, 2022 at 1:25 PM

    Hey Sydney! I think you made some great points regarding personalized marketing. I think personalized marketing is incredibly beneficial not just for the companies, but also for the consumers. We are able to receive ads that are tailored for us and our needs. I do agree that ethics and maintaining morals should be considered when gathering user information. I think it will be interesting to see how target marketing continues to grow and change over the next few years.

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  2. Samantha SurowiecSeptember 22, 2022 at 8:54 PM

    Hi Sydney! I love the article you found about ethical profiling. I kinda touched on something similar, though I think you phrased it much better than me. I personally like that we get targeted ads and it doesn't bother me much that the internet knows so much about us. In my blog, I mentioned how ignorance is bliss, and maybe I'm too comfortable under that umbrella, but for now, I have no qualms. I do think that profiling can be harmful, so I really appreciate how you highlighted ethical marketing. Good job!

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