Perception of gen X consumers towards online behavioural advertising

Abstract

Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) collects data from the users and displays advertisements based on the data's insights, making the ads relevant to the users. There are perceived benefits like personalization & customization and associated concerns regarding data privacy and intimidation. Gen-X consumers are a late introduction to the Digital Era, but they still form a sizeable chunk of the market from an advertisers' point of view. Hence, it is important to understand the perception of OBA from the lens of a Gen-X consumer. We approached the problem by breaking down the question into three parts: awareness, knowledge, and attitude and summarized our findings under these three areas. The insights combined give us an understanding of the perception of the consumers. Gen-X consumers appreciate the discovery of new or similar products through targeted advertisements with relatively lesser effort. There is relatively less concern about the usage of behavioural information by advertisers to display ads. They appear to benefit more from the ads than the cost incurred in sharing their behavioural information.