Online Ad Targeting Does Work—As Long As It's Not Creepy

If you click on the right-hand corner of any advertisement on Facebook, the social network will tell you why it was targeted to you. But what would happen if those buried targeting tactics were transparently displayed, right next to the ad itself? That's the question at the heart of new research from Harvard Business School published in the Journal of Consumer Research. It turns out advertising transparency can be good for a platform—but it depends on how creepy marketer methods are.

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