Have you noticed that after browsing websites about a particular topic, you see related ads on other, unrelated websites? For example you might search for gardening tips and visit a website from a gardening magazine, or a blog on gardening, or other web pages on gardening. Then later you are on the People Magazine website reading about Tom Cruise – and there is an ad for a garden tool! The ad seems out of place since it does not relates to Tom Cruise – but it relates to your interests.

Interest Based Advertising
Google looks at the types of pages you visit, taking into account how recently and frequently those pages have been visited. They use that information to show relevant ads. As a Google AdWords manager, I can choose to show groups of ads through this new “Interest based advertising program”. It is a new way to reach prospective clients and not waste ad impressions on people who are not interested.

Interest Based Vs. Remarketing
When I manage your advertising, I may also use “remarketing”.   Remarketing advertising shows your ads to  people who have visited a specific page on your website. This is in contrast to interest based advertising where ads are shown to people based on their interests and not because they visited a particular page on the advertisers website.

Set Your Personal Ad Preferences
Google allows you to see and edit the interest information they are using to show ads to you:

http://www.google.com/ads/preferences

Google also guesses your age and sex as part of this program. They did a pretty decent job on me:

They picked up that I was uploading some videos to You Tube. Why not? They are part of Google. They also picked up on the Asian Cuisine when I was looking for a new Chinese restaurant since my regular hangout “Wu’s Garden” went out of business.

I don’t mind seeing ads for these topics because I am interested. I’d rather not see any more mortgage or diet ads.

History Preferences Vs. Ads Preferences
In a previous blog, I wrote about your customized search results and how to turn off the tracking of your search history. I had turned mine off, yet this interest data was still collected. It may be because I am often “logged in” to Google, or it may be the interest data preference has to be set independently. In my case I like to see search results that a new searcher, with no history would see, but I don’t mind seeing ads about interesting products.

Have you noticed these ad patterns? Do you plan to opt out of the interest ads, edit or add other categories? Are you using interest categories in an AdWords campaign?