Why Am I Getting This Ad? How the Degree of Targeting Disclosures and Political Fit Affect Persuasion Knowledge, Party Evaluation, and Online Privacy Behaviors

Political advertising on social media heavily capitalizes on the fact that citizens leave behind data traces through their online behaviors. Even though this allows parties to target citizens based on their age, gender, or even specific interests, there is often a mismatch between the parties and the individuals' party preferences. This study investigates how different degrees of targeting disclosures (demographic/location-based targeting disclosure versus preference-based targeting disclosure) and the political fit of targeted ads (high fit versus low fit) affect participants' party evaluation and online privacy behaviors. Two dimensions of persuasion knowledge, perceived manipulative intent (PMI) and targeting knowledge (TK), act as mediators. Results from an online experiment (N = 430) reveal that the degree of targeting disclosure did not activate these dimensions. However, high political fit of the ads led to lower PMI and higher TK. In addition, political fit improved party evaluations via PMI and TK and reduced privacy behaviors via PMI. We conclude that citizens do not activate their defense mechanisms against targeted ads when the targeting comes from a favored party.