Google Launches Behavioral Targeting Ad Program

By: E&P Staff Google said Wednesday it is launching a behavioral targeting advertising program for display and text.

This "interest-based advertising" goes a step beyond simply targeting ads based on the page being viewed, explained Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice president of Product Management.

"There are some situations, however, where a keyword or the content of a Web page simply doesn't give us enough information to serve highly relevant ads," she wrote in a company blog announcing the program. "We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the Web sites people visit. 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."

Wojcicki conceded the new program may raise privacy issues.

"We're launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate our commitment to transparency and user choice," she wrote.

She said ads will be clearly labeled, and those labels can be used to "get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads."

With a tool called "Ads Preferences Manager," she said, users can view, delete, or add "interest categories" associated with their browsers.

"You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here," Wojcicki added. "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."

The new program comes days after Google announced it would begin running display ads on Google News, a site that takes much of its content from newspapers. The program also follows the continuing rollout of Yahoo's behavioral targeting APT ad program developed for the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium.