Advertisement content presented to a user of an online system is presented along with an option allowing the user to view one or more reasons for presentation of the advertisement content to the user. If the user selects the option, based on targeting criteria associated with the advertisement content and characteristics associated with the user, the online system selects one or more characteristics of the user satisfying the targeting criteria and presents a description to the user identifying the selected one or more characteristics satisfying the targeting criteria. The online system may apply one or more rules based on user perception of characteristics when selecting the one or more characteristics included in the description. An option for the user to prevent use of the selected one or more characteristics when the online system subsequently selects advertisement content for the user is also presented with the description.