Usability of advertising preference tools on smartphones: AdChoices and Facebook Ad Preferences

Abstract

Online behavioral advertising (OBA) is the practice of targeting consumers with ads based on data collected by tracking their online activities over time, and now across their devices. The online advertising industry in the U.S. has developed self-regulatory codes and practices over the past 20 years in response to privacy concerns raised by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These codes typically require providing notice that behavioral targeting may be occurring and offering consumers a choice to opt out of receiving behaviorally targeted ads. The FTC has raised concerns about how OBA practices affect consumers’ privacy in the mobile environment, due to the additional tracking technologies mobile devices afford. This research builds upon previous work that explored consumers’ comprehension of and attitudes toward OBA practices in general, and the online advertising industry’s notice-and-choice mechanisms in particular. It consists of two qualitative user studies that explored newer permutations of the industry’s OBA preference-setting tools in the mobile environment: AdChoices and Facebook Ad Preferences. These companion studies are related in that they both employ hands-on usability research of the live tools on mobile devices, document usability problems, and examine users’ mental models of what the tools do and how they function in the context of Norman’s (2013) Action Cycle. The results of both studies were consistent with previous research that has found serious usability problems that impact users’ ability to even find the tools, let alone understand what they do, and use them to exercise meaningful choice. Participants in the AdChoices study had limited awareness and almost no experience using the AdChoices icon; only one knew of and had used the Consumer Choice page for mobile web; and none knew about or had used the AppChoices mobile app. Participants in the Facebook study had some familiarity with its in-ad preferences controls, but most had never seen the account-level Ad Preferences tools. If users do not know these tools exist, it is impossible for them to be useful in helping users regulate their preferences for receiving behaviorally targeted advertising. Recommendations are made for improving the visibility and usability of these tools, but in the end, this only addresses a small part of a much larger problem. Online advertising is only the tip of an iceberg of the pervasive and often surreptitious practices of consumer data surveillance, collection, profiling, targeting, and algorithmic filtering that are deeply impacting our society.