Social media advertising delivers targeted ads based on member information. Privacy concerns arise from third-party access to member data. Members provide information voluntarily, which is used for data aggregation and targeted advertising. Concerns about information privacy have arisen due to external application developers accessing member information.
Social media advertising is a form of online advertising that delivers highly targeted ads based on information provided by members of a social media service. While social media advertising has been hailed by some as a revolution in direct marketing, it has also caused many privacy concerns. Such concerns mainly arise from the distribution of member information acquired by third parties, such as applications and other platforms not created by the social media service itself.
The first step in social media advertising is to gain members by encouraging people to join a particular social media, such as a social networking site like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, a video sharing site like YouTube, a photo sharing site like Flickr, a blog, or even an email provider. These services first collect basic contact information from the member, such as his name, email address or telephone number. The service will then encourage the member to fill in other fields of information which may be purely voluntary, such as age, gender, location, hob and interests. The more information the member provides about themselves, the more easily they are placed into a specific demographic for data aggregation and, subsequently, targeted social media advertising.
Once data is collected from members of a given social media service, it may be kept on a secure server for a limited period of time subject to the terms and conditions of the service, which must be agreed upon when members register. The social media service then matches the member’s data with the particular demographic their sponsors want to target for products or services. As a result, a social media member who listed “cycling” among his “Kansas” hobe as her location could then see ads on the service’s website for a Kansas-based bike shop. The less details the member provides in her information profile, the less targeted the ads will be. For example, if a member only indicates that she is female, she may then see ads for products or services that appeal to a broad cross-section of women of various ages, locations and ethnicities.
Although some members of social media consider social media advertising to be quite benign if not welcome, the increase in the use of social media over the past decade has raised concerns about information privacy. For example, sites like Facebook allow external application developers to create quizzes, games, and other paraphernalia that members can use in exchange for access to their account information. Because the restrictions and policies surrounding what outside developers do with this information are relatively murky, some are concerned that it could leave members vulnerable to identity theft, spamming, and other illegal or unethical practices.
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