Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: Google to Target 'Interests' in Ads

Written by Erin Barker

Wednesday, March 11. 2009 at 11:30 AM EDT Post a comment

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Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) announced that it will begin using behavioral targeting in its ads today, tracking users' Web activity and feeding them advertising that matches their interests.

According to a post on the Google blog, the company will track users' browsing activity with cookies and assign users to categories of interest -- such as pets, cars, sports, etc. -- based on the types of sites they visit.

Anticipating privacy concerns, Google has made some allowances. For instance, it is offering users the chance to see and edit the information it's gathered about their interests. And, like Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), it will also give users the chance to opt out.

But some privacy advocates are still concerned that Google isn't doing enough to make users aware that they are being tracked, The New York Times reports.

"We think more needs to be done on how to educate people and tell them how to opt out," says Ari Schwartz, chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Of course, now that Google is on board with behavioral targeting, the pressure is on for others to follow suit. Will this movement "quell calls for government regulation," as online advertising industry groups have suggested, or will it just intensify regulators' concerns?

In other news:

Speaking of Google properties, Gmail is now rivaling YouTube in traffic. According to Hitwise, Gmail supplanted YouTube in the No. 10 spot on its most popular Websites list in January, and the two have been switching back and forth ever since. It's the first significant change in a while to the usually constant top 10 -- but if you examine the market share trends for both sites (below), you can see it was a long time coming.

Hitwise

A man broke into Revision3 COO David Prager's home last night. So what did Prager do? Twitter the entire experience, naturally. Some would advise calling the police, but Prager, a true man of the Web 2.0 world, instead issued a long series of Tweets and recorded part of his experience on UStream.

Prager's Tweet