Broadband Tech > Security > Security > Google Uses Your Browser History To Target Ads

Google Uses Your Browser History To Target Ads

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Google plugs your surf history into ad money machine
Wades into interest-based ads behavioral targeting

Google has unleashed a new behavioral ad targeting scheme onto YouTube and partner sites in its AdSense advertising network - though it has carefully avoided the term behavioral ad targeting. Google prefers "interest-based advertising."

Whatever you call it, YouTube and AdSense sites are now showing ads to websurfers based on the (many) pages they've perused in the past. "We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit," Google VP Susan Wojcicki wrote this morning in a blog post entitled "Making ads more interesting."

"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. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads."

Google refers to the new system as a beta. But it calls everything a beta.

The new system does not tailor ads on Google's search engine. At least, not yet. Though you have to wonder whether Google is already using browser history to place search ads. "To date, we have shown ads based mainly on what your interests are at a specific moment," the company says in today's blog post. Note the word "mainly."

What Google does not say in its blog post is that the new system is designed to juice its money machine. Behavioral ad targeting is the reason Google toys with the definition of anonymization when anonymizing your IP address.

While pitching its new ad-targeting methods as a godsend for websurfers everywhere, Google does acknowledge that the system has a certain appeal to advertisers intent on making money from websurfers. And it realizes that such a program raises questions over user choice and privacy.

In an effort to answer these questions, Google is offering something called an Ad Preferences Manager, where you view and edit the ad categories Google has placed you in based on your past behavior. If you like, you can even tell Google to serve you ads in additional categories.

You can also opt-out of the program. But this is a cookie-based opt-out, which means you'll have to opt-out on every machine and every browser you use. It also means that if you're someone who regularly clears your cookies for privacy reasons, you'll opt yourself back in.

Google does offer a browser plug-in that maintains your opt-out even when cookies are cleared, but it's only available for Firefox and IE [get it here]. So, you're out of luck if you're running Safari or Opera - or Google's own Chrome.

To Google's credit, its privacy controls go beyond what you'll find on similar ad-targeting systems recently introduced by Yahoo!, AOL, and others. But the end result is that most people will be targeted without realizing they've been targeted.

"Getting to see the categories that you're profiled on and the fact that you get to edit is a positive step," says Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a watchdog that has closely eyed the rise of behavioral ad targeting. "But we have been supportive of the idea that if you're going to give an opt-out, it shouldn't be a cookie, and it should be something that's much easier to find and use...If you're concerned about privacy, you're told to delete your cookie. There has to be a better option."

Google says it has achieved "transparency" by tagging ads with labels that link to detailed information about its behavioral targeting. But Schwartz argues that transparency is in the eye of the beholder. "Putting in a link that says 'Ads by Google' is confusing to a lot of people. It looks like something you'd click on to find out how you'd advertise - not how you're being advertised to."

Plus, Schwartz says, if you opt-out of Google, you're still opted-into behavioral targeting programs from all sorts of other online ad mavens. The Center for Democracy and Technology has called on Google and others to create an industry-wide database that would allow anyone to instantly opt-out of all interest-based advertising. Er, behavioral ad targeting.

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who uses google?
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BlooMe

reply to SUMware
Companies want to use targeted advertising?

This is news?

reply to SUMware
I had long assumed they were doing something along those lines. So I delete my google cookies whenever I restart the browser. Perhaps I should also be deleting google/youtube flash cookies.
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AT&T dsl; Westell 327w modem/router; openSuSE 11.0; firefox 3.0.6

reply to SUMware
Does anyone really even care?

reply to SUMware
Safari and IE8 have an option to enable private browsing where nothing is kept while surfing. That's why google came out with chrome. Unless they're able to inclease chrome's market share this strategy will no long work in the near future.

reply to SUMware
I say, let 'em have their targetted advertising. Let 'em make more money off ads. Let 'em have their cookies. All because I'd rather not have to pay for YouTube.

Ad revenue is a good thing.

Besides, seriously, what are the real privacy issues here? "Browser X visited Ad-Sense sites 1, 2, and 3, in categories J, K, and Y, let's send him ad Z!"

reply to SUMware
Transparency - We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google's ad serving.
Choice - We have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
Control - You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn't deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.

According to google you can download a plugin here.
»www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin/

I fixed it using my own configuration on privoxy so nothing is even loaded and the images are blocked and even the js trackers.
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Fb:2009 The nightmare men have returned.

reply to SUMware
Been using Scroogle for a couple of months now, based upon your recommendation and other posters as well. Seems to work just fine.
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Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.

reply to Potty Time

reply to SUMware
The only thing interesting about this is that it's (supposedly) new.

For years Google's ad network has had the capability to track most surfers - anyone who doesn't deliberately take action to foil the methods - all over the web. You look at cnn.com, there's a Google ad on the page, Google checks its cookie, maybe updates it, and at least gets a row in a server log, maybe with a unique identifier. Later you look at ferret-lovers.com, or whatever other site, the cookie tells them it's the same person. If the cookie has been deleted or not accepted, but the ads aren't blocked, the server still gets a hit from the same IP. And these are only the most obvious methods.

So I always assumed Google was building profiles on individuals (albeit maybe identified only by numbers rather than names) and using the profiles for ad targeting. So now Google is claiming that it didn't make full use of the data until now? That is indeed a surprise and hard to explain. And why make this change now? They've added the Doubleclick network of ads and ad servers, etc., but this only extends the reach a little; it doesn't alter the methodology as far as I know.

reply to sivran

reply to Potty Time

reply to SUMware
That piece of news is further justification for my auto-dumping of cookies and temp files and use of Scroogle, AdBlocker and Noscript.

Egeezer loves clean web page results!

reply to nwrickert

reply to nwrickert

reply to EGeezer

reply to SUMware
Profiling?
But, But,....we are told "profiling" is baaaaddd.

Whatever happened to "Don't be evil" Google?
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this member not available for upgrade

reply to swhx7
Isn't one of the main Ms. Googles (Anne Wojcicki) just a tad involved in soliciting, world-wide, human DNA samples for "testing" ( »www.23andMe.com ) ..... Hey, why not, hubby's little company has already indexed your files, records your searches and visits pretty much across much of the www, probably has access to DC data, and more and more and more...., so why not just complete a big part of of the picture, get it over with and send in your friggin' DNA...... How's that for a deeper understanding. Just Trust US ... Sound familiar?

How is it possible for so frigin' many to become so firkin' stupid so quickly?

»www.sun-sentinel.com/features/ho···92.story
Remote car key
The problem: Suppose your remote car door opener does not have the range to reach your car across the parking lot.
The fix: Hold the metal part of your key fob against your chin, then push the unlock button. This turns your head into an antenna, says Tim Pozar, a Silicon Valley engineer. It can extend the key's wireless range by a few car lengths.
Pozar explains: "You are capacitively [sic] coupling the fob to your head. With all the fluids in your head, it ends up being a nice conductor."

This was actually Featured on the Front Page, above the fold, above the Headline, in the Tribune Corporation's SE Florida Unit's Sun-Sentinel, last week. Not the Onion. A major US daily "Newspaper".

Proof of decent? Example of why/how? Both?

Somehow, it must be possible to increase our rate of decent... Oh, wait, there are people actually praying and working on this too....