Professor Turow on consumer attitudes towards behavioral-based marketing

Joseph Turow is Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.

This interview with Professor Turow focuses on consumer attitudes towards behavioral-based marketing; that is, advertising targeted to groups of people based on their purchase history, lifestyle, location, etc.

Professor Turow conducted four national surveys and one California survey on American attitudes towards online behavioral targeting from 1999 to 2009. Taken together, the studies present a picture of continuities and changes in Americans attitudes toward and understanding of the activities, norms and laws through which marketers relate to them digitally, online and off. Professor Turow most recently completed a survey in 2009 with Chris Hoofnagle of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.: Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and Three Activities That Enable It.

A 2005 New York Times Magazine article referred to Professor Turow as probably the reigning academic expert on media fragmentation. He has authored eight books, edited five books, and written more than 100 articles on mass media industries. A few of his titles are Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2006); Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (University of Chicago Press, 1997; paperback, 1999; Chinese edition 2004). Professor Turows continuing national surveys of the American public on issues relating to marketing, new media, and society have received a great deal of attention in the popular press as well as in the research community. He has written about media and advertising for the popular press, including American Demographics magazine, The Washington Post, Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times. His research has received financial support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others.

The interview was conducted on December 3, 2009.

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