Advertisements

Online advertisements have come a long way since the 1990s where they were banners or pop-up windows. Of course the pop-up ads have been reduced to almost zero with pop-up blockers in most browsers (sorry, IE). Then Google changed the entire ad industry with relevant results to the user. Now the algorithms seems to know what I want before I even know. Is this a bad thing? I would prefer ads that I am interested and may peek my interests than ads about ISPs and women hygienic products.

So what can you do about advertisements that you don't want to see? Well, Facebook makes it simple but clicking the arrow/crossmark on the top-right and choosing not to see that specific ad anymore or even anymore ads from that specific company. Google allows you see some of the information that they use to target ads for you here:

So how did Google do? They have my age wrong but I am to turn 25 later this year. Interests, they did a pretty good job but it includes topics that don't pertain to me (e.g. Suzuki. I'm pretty sure I've searched for it once). 

Facebook's advertisement algorithms don't do nearly as a competent targeting as Google has. I wonder how much of my advertisements is affected by my friends on Facebook.

Most (if not most) services, including Facebook and Google, allow you to opt-out of interest based advertisements. But this of course does not mean they won't collect data on your browsing. So why would someone opt-out of personalized ads? The only thing I can think of is that it may ruin a surprise gift that one may buy (by searching for the gift).

As Google states: "Ads enable free web services and content."