Google Opens Up...A Little.

Whilst the online advertising industry invests increasing amounts of money into better and more targeted ways of delivering marketing to online consumers, those same consumers are becoming increasingly aware that their personal data and activities are being logged and used to determine what ads they see.

In response to what many in the marketing industry see as a growing nervousness on the part of these online consumers, Google is now going to be opening up about how and why consumers see the search and Gmail ads they do.

Consumers can already use the ad preferences tool to tweak some of the criteria used to target display ads to them; for example, users can edit or remove topics that Google has decided are of interest, based on browsing behaviour, and can also edit inferred demographics.

Now, Google is going to be showing users information about search engine marketing targeting, and enable users to opt-out of being shown ads from particular advertisers. There will be a small notice on top of ad block saying "Why this ad?" which will link to information about why they are being shown the ad, because of their search history, for example, or due to their current search behaviours.

Apparently, Google's research shows that while fewer than expected people are interested, those that are, are very interested.

As an advertiser, it is never good to advertise to people who actively do not want to see your message or who are scared about how you got their data, so the move can only serve to reassure. Expect to see the feature rolled out with speed over the next few weeks.