Today I got an email from adsense telling me that they were about to start a new advertising feature called “interest-based advertising”. On the surface this looks very much like Phorm’s offering, and has the same privacy issues, however there are some crucial differences.
Differences
Adsense will only be able to categorise webpages that show adsense adverts. In reality of course, that is pretty much every website out there! Phorm’s webwise will categorise every webpage you visit (except according to their exceptions).
Adsense’s opt-out works at the publisher level – and does not involve cookies on the surfer’s browser. Settings are made by the publisher to their account – though by default it looks like it is switched on. Here’s what Google’s info page says:
You can opt out of displaying ads that are based on user-interest categories (e.g. ‘sports enthusiasts’). In turn, Google will not use visitation information from your sites to help create interest categories. However, you cannot opt out of displaying ads to users based on their previous interactions with the advertiser, such as visits to an advertiser’s website.
Can surfers opt-out? Yes, they can, but Google uses cookies in a similar way to Phorm i.e. your surfing habits will only be tracked if your cookie is active. Unfortunately, they don’t really say what “active” and “disable” mean. I presume it doesn’t mean absent. It sounds like you still need to have the cookie, but there’s a parameter that says “don’t categorise me”. I would like to see this point cleared up.
One good thing I noticed about the surfer’s preference page is that you can see which categories Google has assigned you to, so you at least have a chance to control the category of adverts you can see.
At least you don’t have to change ISP to opt out fully, and I dare say there will be some firefox add-on that will ensure you’ll stay opted out appearing very soon.
Thoughts
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Google is doing something like this, but I am a little disappointed. I like the idea of content-based advertising – it links the content of my site to my content not to some vague notion of my site’s category. I really feel uncomfortable with the notion of my activity across sites being logged, although the reality is that it is to some extent.
Google’s email says I need to check up privacy policy – I better have a look at what they say. As someone who places Google ads on some of my sites I am curious whether it’ll make any difference. Will it make someone who doesn’t usually click, click? Will I be showing adverts that have no relevance to my site? Will it push up the prices advertisers pay?
I have nothing against advertising, and people making money from publishing interesting content. I sometimes click on interesting ads myself (not on my own site, in case you’re looking Mr Google). But there are three sticking points for me:
- Privacy. How much information is being stored – and even if it is anonymised can my personal information be derived from it. Note AOL publishing a corpus of anonymised query data a couple of years ago. Social security, phone numbers, DOB information for some users could be gleaned.
- Opt-out should not be cookie dependent in the sense that you must have a cookie to opt-out. The absense of a cookie should opt you out.
- I find the concept of adverts personalised to my surfing habits creepy. I don’t like someone telling me what I like.
