Consumer view on personalized advertising: Overview of self-reported benefits and concerns

In today’s digital world, activities that were once private or shared with a group of selected others are open to public scrutiny as we leave our digital footprint when we visit websites and submit information to online services (Acquisti, Brandimarte, and Loewenstein 2015). As a result, advertisers have access to a wide range of data about consumers: demographic data, information on their interests, location, and more (Smit, Van Noort, and Voorveld 2014). Such data is commonly used by advertisers for personalization, which has been defined as the strategic creation, modification, and adaptation of content and distribution to optimize the fit with personal characteristics, interests, preferences, communication styles, and behaviors (Bol et al. 2018).