While we all know that Google displays ads across the web, you can actually change your ad preferences. Here’s how to do it using My Google Ads Center.
It’s not exactly news that Google knows a lot about you and uses that data to show you ads. But as privacy becomes an increasingly important issue in the tech industry, many users want to be able to control what kinds of ads they see.
Google’s answer? My Ad Center, an all-in-one ad personalization center. In this article, let’s take a look at what it is, how it works, and how you can use it to manage your ad preferences online.
What is Google My Ad Center and how does it work?
Before we look at how you can use My Ad Center to customize your ad preferences, let’s look at how Google collects and uses your data to show you ads across various Google products.
Since ads are a big part of the business, Google wants to show you personalized ads and results. It does this by learning as much about you as possible using the information in your Google account. This includes your age, gender, location, search history, YouTube history, relationship status, and more.
This data is used to create your Advertising ID, and is also accessible by you. Along with other revelations at Google I/O 2022, the company announced My Ad Center, a place where you can customize your ad preferences to see more or fewer ads from a category.
The idea behind My Ad Center is simple: instead of Google guessing what you like and possibly getting it wrong and showing you irrelevant ads, you can tell Google directly what you like and see ads that will actually be useful. It’s an initiative to make your relationship with Google more transparent and give you control over how your data is used.
How to change your Google Ads preferences in My Ads Center
Follow these steps to use My Ad Center to change your Google ad preferences:
- Go to My ad center and make sure personalized ads are enabled. Otherwise, you will not be able to set personalized ad preferences.
- The first section is Advertising themes for you. Here, you’ll see a variety of ad categories that Google has selected for you based on your recent ads and internet activity, such as Games, Investing, Fitness, and more. To see fewer or more ads in a particular category, tap the – either + button on it, respectively.
- The second section is marks for you. Here, you’ll see a variety of brands that Google thinks you might be interested in. As in the last point, touch the – either + button to see fewer or more ads for a particular brand.
- The third section is Your recent ads. Here you can review the ads you’ve recently seen on Google products, such as Search, YouTube, or Discover, and judge whether they’re of interest to you.
- For a deeper look, go to the Customize Ads side panel menu. Here you can sort the topics and brands by name, most recent, and most viewed. You can also filter them to see what you’ve chosen to see fewer or more ads of.
- Certain topics like dating, gambling, pregnancy, and weight loss are considered sensitive. Go to the Sensible and turn them off if you want to see fewer ads on these topics.
- To modify the data that Google has collected about you, go to the manage privacy menu. Here you can check the accuracy of categories like Relationships, Household Income, Education, and more. You can also disable any of these categories entirely.
- Low Activity used to personalize adsYou can choose whether you want your web activity, YouTube history, and location history to be used to show you personalized ads.
- To see all the changes you’ve made to your ad preferences, click my activity at the end of the page.
Currently, My Ad Center is only accessible through the website, but we hope that it will be integrated into Android 14 (among other features), so that more people can use the platform.
See more relevant ads on Google
Google clearly has a lot of data about you, but not all of it is accurate. The guesswork it makes to determine things about you based on your activity and usage may cause you to see inappropriate and irrelevant ads. If you want to see more relevant ads, My Ad Center is a great tool.
However, you should not forget that disclosing your tastes and preferences may also subject you to a higher degree of monitoring. You might even start seeing ads that are so personalized that they feel threatening or predatory. To protect yourself from the same, you should learn the ways that you can prevent your phone from tracking you.