[social-share]
Prof Daniel Angus discusses targeted advertising on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing
Author Kathy Nickels
Date 8 April 2022
Whilst political advertising is seen on TV, pamphlets and billboards, a lot of political activity is also happening online, out of the spotlight and out of public scrutiny. ADM+S researchers are working in partnership with ABC to monitor political advertising on Facebook during the election campaign to uncover how these ads are being targeted.
ADM+S researcher, Professor Daniel Angus and ABC data analyst, Casey Briggs spoke to Fran Kelly this week on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing about the risks of targeted advertising and how the Australian Ad Observatory project plans to gain better oversight of this practice.
“One thing we’re concerned about is the complete lack of transparency and observability into how the ads are being targeted” said Professor Angus.
The majority [of ads] are probably going to be fairly benign but there are instances where they may be fairly targeted, damaging messaging out there”
He said that the problem is that we don’t know what’s out there. The Australian Ad Observatory project provides researchers as a third party, independent oversight of this advertising.
“We are looking for messages of dis- or mis- information. Deliberately false information that’s out there circulating around Australia as well as third parties posting political advertising without disclosing it.”
You can watch the discussion on ABC’s iView Afternoon Briefing. The segment appears at 44:30 on the episode aired on Wednesday 6 April
Visit the Australian Ad Observatory webpage to join this project.
