When Google’s merger with Doubleclick was announced last year, we knew there were going to be some privacy concerns associated with all that data sharing. Now we’re seeing the first of those issues: Google announced yesterday that they are implementing behavioral ad targeting. They are calling it “interest-based” advertising, but make no mistake; it’s based on surfing behavior across the web, not just search history on the Google network. This program is currently in beta, and ads will appear on YouTube and other Google partner sites for now. According to this post on the Google Blog, they are doing this in the interest of “making ads more interesting.” How thoughtful of Google to do that for its users. Do they really think people surf the web looking for interesting advertising?
These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads.
So…if you’re checking out the ultimate French Toast recipe, or reading an article about Civil War history, Google will “know” that you’re a hockey fan — based on past visits to hockey sites — and serve you hockey-related AdSense ads. Not a big deal for sports, but when people are sorted into political, medical, religious or other more personal pigeonholes, there are enormous concerns about what happens to this data.
According to WWW creator Tim Berners-Lee,
“People use the web in a crisis, when wondering whether they have a sexually transmitted disease, or cancer, when wondering if they are homosexual and whether to talk about it … to discuss political views. There will be a huge commercial pressure to release this data. The principle should be that it is not to be collected in the first place.”
Indeed. Contrary to friendly marketing practice, all Google users are opted-in to behavioral ad targeting by default. However, you can opt out by using a browser plugin. However, their method of blocking their own cookie constitutes questionable shenanigans at best. Google also allows users to specify their favorite categories, and which categories they don’t wish to see ads for, but doesn’t say who that data will be shared with or how it will be shared. I have opted out completely, at least until it’s more clear what happens to the data collected.
Many people in the search community believe that Google has stepped over the line, and I tend to agree – at least regarding the program in its current state. While it may result in increased ad ad revenue for Google/Doubleclick, this move raises serious privacy issues, and has been harshly criticized by several online privacy groups. There’s also a creepiness factor – if I’m researching farm equipment, finding ads based on my interest in Christian Louboutins would be somewhat unnerving. Only time will tell us whether users will tolerate Google’s behavioral targeting as-is, or demand some changes to protect their Internet privacy.
