Targeted advertising is discriminatory per definition: it allows the advertiser to discriminate between different types of targets. That is actually the objective.
“Discrimination” of course has an extended meaning when it concerns ethnicity, sex, etc… But it is just an extension of the standard meaning: there is no real difference between telling apart people based on their age or based on their ethnicity/sex/etc… There is a legal difference, but we could chose to extend that legal difference to other kinds of “discrimination”, for example prohibit discrimination when based on age.
There are of course perfectly valid reasons with ample historical evidence why discrimination based on ethnicity or sex was made illegal. I am not disputing that.
What I am saying is that any kind of discrimination in marketing has a potential of problems. Targeted advertising is used to maximise profits (of course). The naive explanation is that it brings products to people who want them will find them. The reality is less naive:
- it brings products with the highest margins to people who have little choice (for example, because they don’t have access to transportation to shop around)
- it increases class differences, for example by only bringing certain brands to certain demographics
- it was demonstrated to influence elections
All this is linked. For example, if demographics linked to a given ethnicity have less access to transportation and therefore less capability to shop around and be informed about prices and differences in product qualities, targeted advertising to that demographic, even if not chosen by ethnicity but by money, address, etc… will help cement a situation where they pay more for lower quality products. It increases revenue for the sellers.
