So i’m thrilled that Google has finally jumped into the interest-based advertising space. Because of the great respect Google has for user privacy it’s been a long time coming, but as an internet user I’m excited. Why? Because this is going to make ads more relevant to me at a time when advertisers seem too willing to interrupt or distract my web experience to otherwise gain my attention. Earlier this week web publishers committed to even bigger ads to try and do away with banner blindness. Groan, what a race to the bottom.
A few weeks back i got the chance to look at my individual interest-based profile on an internal demo. It was really accurate – i like basketball, rock music, politics, and a few other categories. It gave me the option to opt-out of any of those categories or remove my profile all-together. There were no “OMG” moments where something i had read or done on the web now was exposed for everyone to see. It’s just machines talking to machines. Anyway, if this info can be used to help personalize my web experience I’m all for it.
And if the result is better ads that i’m more likely to click on, well that’s one important way to support websites who deliver incredible value to me for free each day.
Agree this is trilling! ! The era of keywords is almost over!There is something more coming up – what people are interested, what are their “interests” and lifestyles? Interests, hobbies, lifestyles – are more stable, more fundamental characteristics of human behavior, thus it could be a way to dive into this new “universe of human interest” However list of interest in Ads Preferences Manager is very primitive and does not reflect natural diversity of interest. For example it list only 3 hobbies! The next step will be using cross-reference of interests. Like if you are already indicated interest in X you should be also interested in Y. The only site that has a list of practically all interests and cross-reference of them is http://www.interestmatrix.com