Yahoo and Microsoft have already been displaying personalized, or interest-based, advertisements for years. Now Google has jumped on the bandwagon. This change affects bloggers and webmasters who run Google AdSense on their sites.
Google AdSense sent out an important email to AdSense publishers with the subject line “Introducing interest-based advertising – action required for your AdSense account”. If you have AdSense on any of your websites, you’ll need to do one of two things: opt out of interest-based advertising, or update the privacy policy of each site to reflect that Google is now tracking your site visitors’ interests for purposes of serving ads which are relevant to them. Google doesn’t suggest any particular wording, so you’re on your own. The deadline for privacy policy updates is April 8.
With interest-based advertising, the ads served to your visitors will relate to their interests, as revealed by the websites they visit, and may have nothing to do with your site’s content at all. This is completely opposite to the original intent of AdSense, which was to serve up relevant advertising on the fly.
Oh, and incidentally, Google stands to make a lot more money this way … and so do you, theoretically at least.
Google’s email doesn’t explain that you, the webmaster, can turn off interest-based advertising. Here’s how to do it. Log into AdSense and click on “My Account.” Click the edit button next to “Interest-based Ads Preference,” the second item from the bottom, to go to a page where you can turn interest-based ads on or off. Whatever you decide, it applies to all the websites where your AdSense ads are displayed.
What did you do, Liz?
I’m webmaster of three sites. One is ad-free, another has only one Google ad on it, and a third is lightly monetized with Google AdSense and Powell’s Books advertising.
I’ve given it some thought, and for the moment, I’m letting the interest-based ads stay on my sites. It’s possible I will change my mind later if I think there’s a problem, but consider this: If someone claims to be a vegetarian but secretly eats meat, and surfs all day for recipes for pot roast, and then complains about an ad for a steak restaurant on my site, whose problem is it really?
Things to think about
Are your site visitors concerned about online privacy? If you run a banking, internet security, or dating website, you can bet they are … but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll take the initiative to refuse cookies or block ads from your website. And Google isn’t the only 800-pound gorilla on the internet who could be keeping tabs on people’s browsing habits; Microsoft and Yahoo use not only cookies but something called “web beacons” to track users’ surfing habits and actions.
The links below explain the privacy policies of some of the biggest internet players. They’re intended to be read by anybody who uses the internet, not just webmasters. The common thread running through all of them is that everyone should decide how much information to disclose about themselves online.
