Shaping how advertisers see me: user views on implicit and explicit profile capture

Public electronic displays are increasingly used for advertising. In a drive to improve the effectiveness of such displays, advertisers and researchers are exploring the creation of systems that show adverts tailored to the context of the display or to the profile of the audience in close proximity to the display. In this paper we explore, through structured interviews with potential users in two European countries, reactions to the ideas of implicit and explicit generation of such profiles and relate these to more general user views on privacy and targeted advertising. The initial results suggest that users are prepared to trade off ease of use against increased levels of control over their data and are therefore more comfortable with an explicit system.