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Google wants to expand how it tracks you for ads - and it's giving you a choice
And yes, Google still knows quite a lot about you.
ONLINE ADS IS still the main way Google makes money, with ad revenue hitting €17.2 billion, and it’s changing the way it targets people.
The company is updating the way it uses your data for advertising, but will be giving users a choice first.
As part of the change, it will combine data from two main areas: search history from the likes of Google search and YouTube and the personalisation features it uses when you’re browsing websites and apps.
Previously, it kept the two sections separate but opting-in to the new changes will use this combined data to show ads that are more relevant to you.
Business Insider says it will begin notifying users over the next few weeks, but you can visit My Activity now to see the new changes (if you have never visited it before, it might be surprising to see how much Google knows about you).
At the same time, it’s also giving users more control over what they see and whether they want to opt-in to this in the first place. As well as updating its My Activity page, where you could see everything, the section controlling what ads you see has also been updated.
If you already have it activated, topics which Google believes you’re interested in will appear separately. If you want, you can delete searches separately – or by date if you want to really clean up your history – and turn off tracking so you don’t see ads based on your interests.
You can visit My Activity here or go directly into Google’s ads settings here.
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