Eric Friedman – Marketing.fm

Most people think that a cookie is a delicious treat – not a file on your computer that tracks where you have been, what you are doing, and other attributes about you. Behavior is what you do – not something quantified in a profile.

That is why with the recent announcement by Google to provide “more interesting advertising” you only see the mention of cookies twice towards the end of the post and behavior not mentioned once. The reason for this is because at the end of the day that is what people want – more relevant ads, without knowing much else.

From the post:

That’s why Google has worked hard to create technology that makes the advertising on our own sites, and those of our partners, as relevant as possible. To date, we have shown ads based mainly on what your interests are at a specific moment. So if you search for [digital camera] on Google, you’ll get ads related to digital cameras. If you are visiting the website of one of our AdSense partners, you would see ads based on the content of the page. For example, if you’re reading a sports page on a newspaper website, we might show ads for running shoes. Or we can show ads for home maintenance services alongside a YouTube video instructing you on how to perform a simple repair. There are some situations, however, where a keyword or the content of a web page simply doesn’t give us enough information to serve highly relevant ads.

This is a great way of introducing the idea of controlling your interest meter or define to Google exactly what you are interested in. You can do this if you are logged into your Google account at the Ads Preferences Manager (must be signed in to see full features)

Via this interface you can add interesting categories and topics that give Google a better idea of what to show you. Since you are going to be seeing ads anyway, you may as well have them tailored towards what you want, and exclude more of what you don’t want.