What is Ads Preferences?

Ads Preferences is a new advertising system from Google that uses information about your browsing history to determine what type of ads are going to be of most interest to you.

When you visit a series of websites, the Ads Preferences system determines what sort of things interest you based on your browsing history.

This information is stored in a profile which, whilst containing info about your interests, contains no information that is able to track you down as an individual.  The data is stored online and accessed using a cookie that is set by Google.

The idea is that it will enhance your browsing experience by reducing your exposure to ads that are unlikely to be of interest whilst increasing your exposure to ads that are likely to attract your attention.

One benefit of this from Google's perspective is that this is likely to increase its ad revenue via.

Of course, there's a privacy concern here: do you want Google to "know" about your browsing history and do you feel there might be a risk that agencies might snoop on what you get up to online?

Google is addressing these concerns by allowing people to opt-out of the Ads Preferences system which you can do by visiting this page

Ads Preferences Opt Out.

Google also provides a set of answers to frequently asked questions about Ads Preferences.

Ads Preferences FAQs

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