Can personal advertising get to the point where it is normalized?

Everybody knows the situation where you are scrolling on social media and at a certain point you encounter an advertisement of a product that you were thinking of the last few days. After that moment you start thinking, how could this happen? I encountered a similar situation recently, when I was hearing a lot lately about a certain brand of home perfume sticks I received an advertisement of the exact product. Without even realizing searching for it. Snapchat describes the phenomenon of personal advertising as: “the practice of creating and delivering advertisements to specific individuals or groups based on their unique characteristics, preferences and behaviors” (Snapchat, 2023).

In personalized advertising, AI is being used to match advertisements to the characteristics and behaviors mentioned by snapchat. Not only snapchat, but also social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok use algorithms in combination with personalized advertising. Using AI while matching advertisements can be beneficial for both parties on the platform: the users and the advertiser. The advertiser has a bigger chance of reaching the right audience, thanks to the algorithm. And the user has a bigger chance of seeing an advertisement that is more appealing to him/her.

Although there are a lot of benefits using algorithms for delivering advertisements to the right consumers, there are also concerns. The major concerns are about privacy and data breaches (Raitaluoto, 2023). These big social media platforms deal with immense amounts of data that are stored on huge servers. If these servers get hacked, data of millions of users are in danger. Businesses have to keep track of these dangers and not underestimate the attention they should pay to data security. Another danger of personalized advertising is that customers may feel uneasy when they are targeted and feel that they are getting tracked (Kokemuller, 2017). This might result in them not using the platform anymore.

All in all personalized advertising has a lot of benefits to advertising businesses. However, social media platforms need to keep paying attention to potential security threats and need to protect their customers’ data.

Kokemuller, N. (2017, November 21). Definition of transparency advertising. Small Business – Chron.com. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/definition-transparency-advertising-35939.html
Raitaluoto, T. (2023). The benefits and challenges of implementing personalized marketing. Market Tailor. https://www.markettailor.io/blog/benefits-and-challenges-of-implementing-personalized-marketing#:~:text=Privacy%20concerns%20and%20the%20risk,time%2C%20resources%2C%20and%20technology.
Snapchat. (2023). Personalized Advertising – How it works and how to do it (2023) | Snapchat for business. https://forbusiness.snapchat.com/blog/personalized-advertising