Posted September 24, 2018 06:38:37 If you’ve ever been caught off guard by a joke, you might want to keep your eye out for it.
The next time you see a funny ad, be wary of the words “fake news,” “misleading” and “spam” in its headline.
The ad is a bad one, but it might have been intended to deceive.
A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied this week by the University of Southern California found that “spammy” ads are as common as “fake” ads in the UK and Germany.
But they’re also more common than you might think.
It’s easy to see why, as the researchers discovered, the ads themselves are a good source of misleading information.
While people often click on a “fake,” the researchers found that they’re often looking for a link to an alternative source of information.
The research also found that people’s willingness to click on misleading content increases with the number of times the ad has been shared.
“People tend to be more likely to click when they’re aware of the context of the ad,” said lead researcher James A. McLeod, an assistant professor of marketing at the USC Gould School of Business.
In other words, it’s not just that the ads are misleading, but that people are more likely than other people to click because they’re being led to believe it’s credible.
“Our results suggest that these ads could be a real source of confusion for consumers, because consumers may be led to think they’re getting something authentic by the fact that they see the ads and read the headline,” McLeod said.
Advertisers may be trying to persuade people to share their ads with friends, family and colleagues.
But when it comes to sharing with the world, it doesn’t always work that way.
“A common misperception is that people don’t click because of their own biases,” McElroy said.
“However, this may be a bit of a misperception because our research showed that people often share their own content when it’s genuine, as opposed to the misleading content that’s being shared.”
The study also found the more often a person clicked on a misleading ad, the more likely they were to share it on social media.
McElroys study was published online on September 24 in the journal Psychological Science.
He said the researchers were interested in whether these kinds of ads had a positive impact on people’s online behavior.
“There are a lot of ways that people can use social media to make money and people don, in turn, use social platforms to promote themselves,” McLearys said.
For example, a study published last year found that the average person spends $9 a day on Facebook and Twitter.
But, as McElrry explained, that’s only a fraction of what people actually spend online.
He and his co-authors found that even the “top” accounts on Facebook — the ones with more than 50 million people — spent less than the average.
People who were not as active in their social media accounts also tended to click more on ads that said something they liked.
So, for example, the study found that ads that say “This product is not suitable for children” will be shared more often.
People often share misleading information online with friends and family members because they believe they’re helping them with a problem.
But the researchers said they did not know if this could have a negative impact on the quality of the ads.
“I think that a lot can be explained by the quality and quantity of the content,” McLoeys said, “but it’s still important to have the right information on the page and be informed.”
