Today over at the Google blog Ms Wojcicki (I have no idea how to spell that so I copied & pasted it) talked about Google’s commitment to make ads ‘more interesting’. Reading the post it actually became clear that’s another way of saying ‘more relevant to you’:
Today we are launching “interest-based” advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view.
I’m sort of waiting for the backlash on this one, but I haven’t really seen any ‘oh my god, Google are watching us in the shower’ reactions. Basically, Google are taking all the data they accumulate from your browsing and showing you relevant content network ads based on your online interests. So if you keep visiting Lolcat pages (and who doesn’t?) you’ll get shown adverts for kitty food and little clothes to dress Muffin up in.
The thing is, Google are gathering all this data by default. If you’re logged into your Google account they knows what you’re searching for and what pages you’re visiting from that search page. They could use that data for all sorts of things – working out what pages to put at the top of the results for example, and choosing what adverts to show a user is just one possibility. I for one don’t mind – if it means I see more adverts for shoes and less adverts for weight loss and baby products (I’m looking at you Facebook!) then that’s a good thing.
According to the Google blog, users can even set their preferences (sort of like Stumbleupon I guess) so you can set your preferred adverts right from the start. The only thing you might lose through all this is that one in a million product that you didn’t know you needed until you saw it. Most of us I think won’t miss the variety.
What about advertisers? Well, this could wind up helping them too. After all, you can already pick content network websites to advertise on, so if users themselves are opting into (or out of) your adverts your market is pretty much selecting themselves. Hooray!
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