An Audience of One: Behaviorally Targeted Ads as Implied Social Labels
Summers, Smith and Reczek study behavioural targeting, which delivers digital ads to individuals based on their online behaviour. They show that a behaviourally targeted ad can act as a social label even without explicit labelling: when consumers recognise that the marketer has inferred something about their identity to serve the ad, the ad works as an implied social label. Across four studies, behaviourally targeted ads lead consumers to adjust their self-perceptions to match the inferred identity.
Summers, Smith and Reczek study behavioural targeting, which delivers digital ads to individuals based on their online behaviour. They show that a behaviourally targeted ad can act as a social label even without explicit labelling: when consumers recognise that the marketer has inferred something about their identity to serve the ad, the ad works as an implied social label. Across four studies, behaviourally targeted ads lead consumers to adjust their self-perceptions to match the inferred identity.
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Summers, C. A., Smith, R. W., & Reczek, R. W. (2016). An Audience of One: Behaviorally Targeted Ads as Implied Social Labels. Journal of Consumer Research, 43(1), 156-178. doi:10.1093/jcr/ucw012