85% of Americans hate targeted political ads on Facebook

85% of Americans don't want political ads on Facebook

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)

The majority of Americans are very much against the practice of tailored political ads, a specific market that is seeing tremendous growth as we get closer and closer to the 2012 election. In fact, most Americans dislike tailored political advertising so much they claim it decreases their chance of voting for a candidate they already support.

The new results come from a 20-minute questionnaire conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. The full findings based on the 1,503 respondents surveyed are in the 28-page document titled "Americans Roundly Reject Tailored Political Advertising" (PDF).

I was particularly interested in these two Facebook-specific conclusions:

• 85 percent of adult Americans agree (including 47 percent who agree strongly) that "If I found out that Facebook was sending me ads for political candidates based on my profile information that I had set to private, I would be angry."


• 70 percent of adult Americans say their... [Read more]