Google now lets users disable targeted ads without breaking useful features by having to turn off settings like Web & App Activity and YouTube History
Online advertising doesn't need to be confusing or out of your control. Sofia Wyciślik-Wilson / BetaNews : Google launches My Ad Center to give you more control over the ads you see Chris Stokel-Walker / Wired UK : A look at Apple's foray into ads, which may boost its revenue but risks annoying its fans and antitrust regulators worldwide Nikita / SamNews 24 : Ad preferences in Google My Ad Center gets customization option Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable : Google My Ad Center Rolling Out To All Matt G. Southern / Search Engine Journal : Google Lets You Disable Targeted Ads & Keep Personalized Searches Andrew Hutchinson / Social Media Today : Google Launches ‘My Ads Center’ to Give Users More Control Over the Ads They See Stephanie Condon / ZDNet : Tired of weight-loss ads? Google offers more control over the ads you see Jon Porter / The Verge : Google's new ad hub offers more control over the advertising it shows you Ronan Shields / Digiday : Google launches My Ad Center as ‘Trust in digital experiences has declined’ Rebecca Klar / The Hill : Google to give users options to choose how ads are personalized Tweets: Eric Seufert / @eric_seufert : 2/ This somewhat arbitrary distinction between the risks of 1P vs 3P data dictates that benign purchase history can't be used to target ads by an ad platform, but precise location data can be used to target ads by the app that collects it. Is this broadly better for consumers? Ryan Barwick / @ryanbarwick : Google's Ads Center is now live One thing I found interesting is that it's almost an ad library with real research implications. -Every ad shown to a user is collected for 7 days -Every brand/topic that advertisers to you is saved for 30 days. https://blog.google/... @google : Your ads are your choice. My Ad Center begins rolling out today for users around the world. Learn more about how My Ad Center helps you control the ads you see on Search, YouTube and Discover. Get the details ↓ https://blog.google/... @adsliaison : Users can also see & adjust which, if any, audience-based interest categories are informing the ads they see via My Ad Center. They can choose whether to use YouTube History for ads personalization - and more. For details see: https://blog.google/... 2/2 Cory Doctorow / @doctorow : The lesson is the same as the one with Apple and the ads - just because the company *sometimes* acts in our interests, it doesn't follow that we should *always* trust them to do so. 74/ Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Apple effectively defined privacy as if your company shares data with a social media ad platform to track effectiveness of ads. However literally selling private user data or using sensitive data for ads in your app aren't a privacy issue. ATT was a land grab not a privacy move https://twitter.com/... Mike Proulx / @mcproulx : Google launches “My Ad Center” to give users more control over their ad experience on Google's sites and apps. https://blog.google/... Glenn Gabe / @glenngabe : More from Google: My Ad Center will start rolling out today, enabling you to control the types of ads of you see across Google on Search, YouTube, & Discover “You'll be able to block sensitive ads & learn more about the info used to personalize your ads” https://blog.google/... https://twitter.com/... Abhishek Baxi / @baxiabhishek : In what is claimed as a ‘privacy first’ move, Google is rolling out My Ad Center on Search, YouTube, and Discover allowing users to make a choice to see more of the brands and topics they like and less of the ones they don't. https://blog.google/... Blake Montgomery / @blakersdozen : In a major fix, Google's own privacy settings will no longer disable crucial features of its apps. https://gizmodo.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Google has iterated on ad-transparency and preference tools for years, including its refreshed Ad Settings and “Why this ad?” controls and advertiser-name disclosures in the later “About this ad” update. My Ad Center advances that arc by separating ad-personalization choice from the activity settings that support Google services.
That separation matters because Google's privacy changes have already drawn scrutiny from publishers, who argued a tracker-blocking plan could tilt the advertising market toward Google in the US antitrust probe.
First-order effects
- Users of Search, YouTube, and Discover can turn off targeted advertising without disabling Web & App Activity or YouTube History.
- Google gains a distinct control layer for ad personalization, rather than making users trade service-history settings for less-targeted ads.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers on Google's surfaces lose personalized targeting for users who opt out, increasing the importance of campaign approaches that do not depend on those users' ad-personalization settings.
- Google can preserve the utility of its history-based features while offering a more legible advertising opt-out, separating two choices that had previously been more tightly coupled.
Third-order effects
- Platform privacy controls are becoming a competitive-policy issue as well as a consumer setting: regulators and publishers can assess whether Google's controls reduce tracking while leaving its own advertising position comparatively protected.
- If this separation becomes the standard model, ad platforms will compete on how much service functionality they preserve when users limit personalization, not solely on the breadth of their tracking controls.
The trend: Digital ad platforms are moving toward granular privacy controls that preserve core service data while narrowing the use of that data for ad personalization.