Advertisements play an important role in driving sales for businesses, while also keeping some services like YouTube and other social media platforms free for use. However, there are situations in which they end up being harmful to the users. For instance, a recovering alcoholic getting ads for the newest beer in town or a woman who cannot get pregnant getting ads for the latest baby diapers.
Google has taken notice of this and is now introducing ways in which users can limit the number of ads they see about sensitive topics now comprising pregnancy, parenting, dating, and weight loss. Initially, you could control the number of ads you could see involving gambling and alcohol ads, but now the company is adding the aforementioned topics to the list of sensitive issues.
Google notes that these new measures will be implemented for both YouTube and Gmail ads and will also apply to third-party sites where Google serves ads. However, Search ads will not be affected, but the tech giant promises they will bring the feature to Search ads in the future.
“People want more control over their ads experience, including blocking ads or categories they prefer not to see,” Karin Hennessy, the group product manager for ads privacy at Google, said in a statement.
“Providing transparency and control has always been a priority for us, so we’re expanding our tools, enabling the choice to see fewer pregnancy and parenting, dating, and weight loss ads. We’ll continue to listen to user feedback and study which categories to expand this feature to in the future.”
These controls will not limit what data Google collects, only what ads will show up. Despite the measures, the company says that some ads are tough to categorize and therefore some might slip through the cracks.
An example is given of someone blocking ads about alcohol, but still sees an airline ad with a flight attendant holding a glass of champagne. This is why the tech giant is promising “fewer” ads rather than “none” for the ads you do not want to see.
How to limit sensitive ads
To get started on choosing which ad categories you do not want to see;
- Head over to myaccount.google.com.
- Select “Data & Privacy” from the menu on the left
- Then search for “Sensitive ad categories”
- Choose the ones you do not wish to see, then select the “see fewer button”
- You will be notified that you should see fewer ads for this category when you are signed in to your Google Account
Google is not the only company at the forefront of restricting ads of a sensitive nature, Meta, for instance, removed the ability of advertisers to target users based on their health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation while Twitter banned political ads and climate change denial ads. Instagram also provides ad topic preferences so that users can see fewer ads from certain categories.
This move by Google is definitely a welcome one, however, it does not mean by simply blocking these categories you will be seeing fewer ads in total, rather the sensitive ads will be replaced by other types of ads.
