TechWag

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Google is sending out e-mails to everyone who uses Google Adsense to let those users know that they get to make changes to their privacy policy. The new interest based advertising is going to change a number of things for hundreds of thousands of web sites that use Google ads.

Here is the text of the e-mail in its entirety.

Hi,

We’re writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site’s privacy policies. You’ll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. “sports enthusiast”). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category. To learn more about your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Center at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=20310.

As a result of this announcement, your privacy policy will now need to reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100557 to ensure that your site’s privacy policies are up-to-date, and make any necessary changes by April 8, 2009. Because publisher sites and laws vary across countries, we’re unfortunately unable to suggest specific privacy policy language.

For more information about interest-based advertising, you can also visit the Inside AdSense Blog at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/03/driving-monetization-with-ads-that.html.

We appreciate your participation and look forward to this upcoming enhancement.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your AdSense product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

I do not know if this will increase the quality of the advertising, but there is an interesting blow back from this idea from a group of folks who have made a web monkey script that will automatically click on every ad on a web page. The “Unclick Google” campaign is a classic case of web based activism that would if there are enough people have a serious influence on how advertising works, and increase the rate of click fraud.

What is interesting through this though is that I have not seen the same level of protest that say, Facebook Beacon got, or the same level of protest that Phorum got along the way. Are people just burned out on this issue, or can there be a valid protest against a company that admittedly is huge, and controls a good section of the advertising and search market?

Interestingly enough, I am willing to move off of Google ads if there is another company or grouping that can show good quality ads without all the pron and other garbage ads that are on the other advertising networks. In the longer run, how we decide to deal with this, either through protest like the Unclick Google campaign, or through simply abandoning Google Ads, I know that we are now seeking sponsors rather than relying on Google ads to help pay the bills.