Google Adwords Interest-based Advertising

Google is to launch Interest-based Advertising as a Beta test to limited number of Adwords Advertisers over the next several months. Interest-based Advertising is user-behavioral targeted advertising within the Google Content Network.

Google has all the web pages that show Adsense ads in the index. By placing cookies on web users’ browsers, Google collects information about their interests when they visit websites that have Adsense ads. Google then assigns each user to some categories / sub-categories of interest.

Interest-based Advertising will affect Adwords Advertisers, Adsense Publishers, and users browsing the web. Interest-based Advertising will allow users browsing the web to get more useful and relevant ads, and advertisers and publishers to generate higher ROI.

Web Users

Here is a scenario when Google’s Interest-based Advertising is in place:

Mary’s favorite hobby is gardening. Mary will see more relevant gardening ads because she visits many gardening websites. Here’s how that works:

When Mary visits websites that display ads provided by Google’s AdSense program, Google stores a number in her browser (using a “cookie”) to remember her visits. That number could look like this: 114411.

Because many of the websites that Mary visits are related to gardening, Google puts her number (114411) in the “gardening enthusiast” interest category.

As a result, Google will show more gardening ads to Mary (based on her browser) as she browses websites that use AdSense.

How Interest-based ads work on YouTube?

YouTube also uses interest-based advertising to show relevant ads on its site. If Mary watches many videos about cooking on YouTube, she may see more ads related to cooking as she browses YouTube and websites that use AdSense. Similarly, she may see more gardening ads on YouTube based on sites she previously visited. Because YouTube is integrated into the Ads Preferences Manager, Mary can edit the interest categories that are relevant to her in one place. To learn more about YouTube’s approach, see YouTube Advertising and You.

Interest-based ads are browser-based. You can select the categories / subcategories of ads you will receive or opt-out of Interest-based ads completely at anytime via Ads Preferences Manager.

Adwords Advertisers

With interest-based advertising, you will be able to reach users based on your past interactions with them, such as their visits to your website. We’ll also provide interest categories, such as “sports enthusiasts,” so you can reach the audience of your choice.

For information regarding to advertisers, refer to this Inside Adwords blog post.

Adsense Publishers

With this enhancement they’ll also be able to reach users based on their previous interactions with them, such as visits to the advertiser website, as well as reach users on the basis of their interests (such as “sports enthusiasts” or “travel enthusiasts”).

To develop interest categories, we’ll recognize the types of webpages users visit across the AdSense network.

For information regarding to publishers, refer to this Inside Adsense blog post.

Conclusion

The old way of online advertising is that the ad networks or ad publishers choose what to be targeted to the web users. Interest-based targeted ads change the way of online advertising – Google allows the consumers the options to self-target ads.

To make Interest-based ads available to the online advertising industry, Google has overcome user privacy issues that has long been struggling by advertisers, publishers and Internet companies and regulators.

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