Broadband News

Privacy campaigners are often concerned about the amount of knowledge Google has on web users and so plans for its beta behavioural targeting platform, Interest Advertising Based, to go live before the end of the year will soon be big news.

However, the Senior Product Manager responsible for the service, Clay Bavor, is keen to point out that far from acting like a ‘big brother’ organisation, the advertising platform actually offers surfers more protection than any other network.

With Interest Based Advertising only in beta the safeguards for personal privacy have not been clearly highlighted yet but before the service goes live the company will publicise a site through which web users can opt out of being tracked on sites within Google’s massive advertising network of publisher sites. This massive network, which is believed to number more than 100,000 web sites serves an estimated four fifths of the world’s online display adverts.

Hence Bavor, raised in California b claims the service has the potential to make more sub categories of interests than rivals.

“Our large size allows us to track people anonymously around many sites and so get very granular information on which services they have been to and which categories of interests that puts them in to,” he says.

“We have so much data that we can go a lot further than other interest based services. We can build up lists of anonymous users who are interesting in, say, family cars or small, city cars, rather than just listing people interested in cars.”

Check your channels

If this sounds like a little too much data, Bavor points out that it is the only advertising network to list the interests it holds for a web user, or rather a web browser at the site www.google.com/ads/preferences. Go to the page and Bavor claims most people will be surprised at how they can take control over how they are served adverts.

“Anyone can go to the site and instantly see which interest categories we have them down for,” he says.

“They can then take full control. If they want they can opt out at the click of a button or they can remove a particular interest. They may have bought a new car, for example, and so car adverts aren’t as relevant for them now as they were before.

“Alternatively, they can actually be more proactive and add channels they’re interested. They can tell us what items they’re interested in so we can ensure they get the most relevant adverts served to them.

“They also have the option to opt-out altogether if that’s what they wish.”

Targeting made easy

Bavor also points out that the most crucial thing about Interest Based Advertising is that it does not tap in to what a person has been searching for on Google. This, he accepts, would be a step too far. Instead, like other behavioural targeting system, it tracks people anonymously only through the web sites they visit. Again, Bavor points out, for those worried about being tracked online there are no channels on its advertising platform for sensitive subjects and so browsing on sites with narcotic, adult, medical or alcohol content will not be recorded.

Just as with its normal AdSense network, which publishers and advertisers can sign up easily and without the need for a media agency to act as a middle man, Bavor believes Google is bringing ease-of-use to behavioural targeting.

“We’re not there to replace advertising agencies as they’re an important part of our business,” he claims.

“But we are there to make behavioural targeting a lot easier for sites to sign up for and for advertisers to tap in to at the click of a button.”

Privacy campaigners will not welcome the largest force on the net talking about moves to push a behavioural targeting beta into a fully blown service before the year is over but Bavor’s opinion is that Google makes internet advertising easy for publishers and advertisers alike and this is simply being pushed in to behavioural targeting. For him, the crucial point is the Ads Preferences service giving users control over the categories their interests are listed against with the ultimate option of a one-click ‘opt-out’ button.