Google and Yahoo Make it Easier to Opt Out of Their Ads

August 9, 2008

Recently there has been a lot of talk in the press about the large amounts of data that big Web companies are collecting on users through the use of cookies. These companies collect information as you browse the Internet by dropping a cookie on your browser (no personally identifiable information is gathered, just a users’ IP address.)

The types of information collected include what websites you visit, what types of things you are searching for, and what ads you click. They use that information to then serve customized ads that are more closely based on your assumed interests. For example, someone who goes to many consumer reviews sites on BMWs, visits car shopping sites for BMWs, and searches for “2008 BMW X5″ would then be considered an in-market car / BMW shopper in terms of data, and thus receive more ads about cars and BMWs instead of ads about other interests such as food and restaurants. This targeting technology is called behavioral targeting.

The Web companies that are under the most scrutiny are the big Web publishers such as Yahoo! and Google, the big Ad Serving solutions such as Doubleclick and Atlas (owned by Google and Microsoft respectively) and other big Ad Networks such as Platform A (mainly includes Ad.com and owned by AOL) and ValueClick.

Well this week Yahoo and Google both made it easier for you to opt out of their ad targeting on both their internal sites and their ad networks across the Web. Yesterday Yahoo announced a new one-click opt-out policy, and two days ago Google announced it was possible to opt out of both Google and Doubleclick ad targeting in one click as well.

Many think that both of these announcements are preemptive measures by Yahoo and Google to protect themselves as Congressional scrutiny over these issues is heating up. The fact is that these new policies will not amount to much.  The majority of people will never hear about the ability to opt out and those that do will probably not bother with it anyways.

I, for one, am in the minority and will not be opting out, not because I am too lazy but because I actually like the idea of customized targeting, showing me ads more along the lines of what I actually want to see. I also know firsthand of some cool new changes going on in the online advertising space and am interested to see how these targeting technologies develop in the near future.

Again, I know I’m in the minority there though, so if you want to opt of ad targeting for either of these, i.e. don’t want their cookies, you can do so for Yahoo’s here and Google’s here.

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