Are We Getting Ready For A New Round of Anti-Google Paranoia?

Usually when Google does something - whatever it is - it inevitably attracts tons of attention from public and media. But the problem is that we have not seen actually groundbreaking announcements from the internet giant recently as they usually come up with things like new features added to Gmail Labs.

Yet it looks like today we are having an announcement that is actually important and that has all the chances of changing the way a huge number of web sites are monetized. The new idea introduced by Google is called Interest-Based Advertising and is meant to change the way ads are served throughout Google’s contextual advertising network.

Behavioral targeting has been here for quite a while now - practiced by giants like Yahoo or AOL but since Google plays the leading role in the online advertising market finally taking this step for Google means huge changes for the industry overall.

The approach offered by Google is quite simple and certainly represents an embodiment of every marketer’s dream - internet users will now see ads meeting their interests determined based on their previous online behavior and interaction with the advertiser (like prior visits to the site, previous purchases or products added to a shopping cart but never paid for). It is interesting that search history or information from other Google services (like Gmail) will not be used in determining interests for a user to be used in the new behavioral targeting of ads.

Behavioral targeting of ads will be used on websites when contextual advertising simply does not work - like when there’s not enough context to offer an ad to a visitor. All in all, Interest-Based Advertising means a new level of relevancy of ads used by a huge number of internet publishers via Google’s Adsense advertising network which could really make the internet a better place for quite a number of users.

Initially the new approach to ads targeting will only be available to a select number of advertisers invited to participate in the limited beta testing for them to choose exactly how they want to contact users with their ads but eventually the targeting will be included in the AdWords console for all advertisers to use.

The good part is that internet users will be able to see what categories of interests are assigned to them automatically and can choose what it is that they are mostly interested in and also tell Google about things they are not interested at all - and Google will use this user-entered information to serve more relevant ads to such users. In the new tool called Ads Preferences Manager a user will now be able to tell Google exactly what should be considered as topics of interest to him or her and what should not. And of course there is still the tool to opt out of Google tracking your behavior to serve you better ads.

So everyone is supposed to be totally happy about the new initiative (same as people invariably do whenever Google announces anything new at all): advertisers will be happy as they will be able to better reach their target audience while publishers will be happy as they will be able to generate more revenue off visitors clicking more relevant ads on their sites. And even internet users are supposed to be happy as they won’t get to see ads they are not interested in at all.

The only question that remains to be answered is that of privacy as using cookies in such a manner will obviously raise questions of Google tracking and keeping way too much information about every step we take online. Of course here Google has to offer the tools to choose interests for users and opt out of the program entirely to forbid Google to track information about what we do with our browsers.

But of course we should keep in mind that opting out is very different from opting in and the vast majority of internet users will follow the default pattern and Google will continue to use their private information without such users even realizing it is happening at all. And letting people know their behavior is actually tracked online by Google should take lots of work and is not really what is in Google’s best interest at all.

So of course it is no wonder we will hear new talks of the big brother Google watching every step we take online and using these steps to monetize our presence on the web. And while Google does have a convenient answer to all the concerns as it actually does offer tools to opt out of the program, I don’t think privacy advocates will keep silence over this new move of the online advertising giant.