Google to start interest-based ads

Global - Google is moving into the world of behavioral targeting with the introduction interest-based advertising that will use people's web browsing history to target them with relevant advertising.

Announced in the US yesterday, Google has started interest-based advertising on its content network and YouTube to a limited-number of beta-advertisers in the US and UK only. A Google Singapore spokesperson said the company "hopes to expand the beta over the course of the year to advertisers around the world, but we have no specific timelines to share right now".

Google vice president product management Susan Wojcicki said on the Google company blog: "By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, we can create more value for everyone. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers. Advertising is the lifeblood of the digital economy: it helps support the content and services we all enjoy for free online today, including much of our news, search, email, video and social networks."

Wojciki said to date Google has "shown ads based mainly on what your interests are at a specific moment".

"So if you search for [digital camera] on Google, you'll get ads related to digital cameras," she said.

"If you are visiting the website of one of our AdSense partners, you would see ads based on the content of the page. For example, if you're reading a sports page on a newspaper website, we might show ads for running shoes. 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."

Google said the new form of interest-based advertising raises questions about privacy and user choice so it has introduced three new features. They are - transparency, which is labeling of ads by Google to allow access to further information on how those ads are served - choice, an ad preferences manager that allows users to view, delete or add interest categories, and control - the choice to opt out of the ad cooki for the AdSense partner network.