Google launched today a “beta”-test for their new “interest-based” advertising with adsense on partner-sites and on YouTube.

In general I think this is something that should benefit all sides: The Advertisers get their ads more targeted in front of potential customers, Google (and their content partners) will experience higher click rates, thus earning more money, and the consumer gets (only) ads he’s interested in.

But there are also a downsides to that:

a) The customer might get irritated if he gets ads presented he’s not expecting correlated to the content he’s currently reading/watching. I.e. he’s been surfing all morning for baby cloth, but now he want’s to check out some tools for his workshop but gets still baby ads – I know a pretty drastic example, but I guess you’ll get the point.

b) Privacy issues: It’s an opt-out procedure: as a user you’re in unless you opt out – huh? You can use the Ads Preferences Manager to opt out. Well for us tech-savvy people this might not be a big thing (IF we know about it) but the average Joe and Jane might not even know what’s going on, let alone understand the information presented to them on that Ads Preference Manager. – And to make your options permanent you have to install a browser plug-in. WHAT? When I’m that privacy wary I’m for sure installing a tool from a company I’m suspicious of…

This will start a lot of discussions at least in Europe. The safer way would be to do the “interest-tracking” only to those who opt-in. Easily done with an ad like: “If you want to see for you even more relevant ads, click here”

Just my 2ct

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