How to Change Your Google Ad Preferences in My Ad 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 topic in the tech industry, many users want the ability to control what kind of ads they see.
Google’s answer? My Ad Center, an all-in-one ad personalization hub. In this article, let’s see what it is, how it works, and how you can use it to manage your ad preferences online.
What Is Google’s My Ad Center and How Does It Work?
Before we see how it’s possible to use My Ad Center to customize your ad preferences, let’s look athow Google collects and uses your datato show you ads across various Google products.
Given ads are a large part of the company,Google wants to show you personalized resultsand ads. It does that by learning as much about you as possible using the info 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 you can access it too. Alongside otherrevelations at Google I/O 2022, the company announced My Ad Center, a place where you can personalize your ad preferences to see more or less ads of a category.
The idea behind My Ad Center is simple: instead of having Google guess what you like and potentially get it wrong and show you irrelevant ads, you can just tell Google directly what you like and see ads that will be actually useful. It’s an initiative to make your relationship with Google more transparent, and give you control over how your data gets used.
How to Change Your Google Ad Preferences on My Ad Center
Follow these steps to use My Ad Center to change your Google ad preferences:
My Ad Center is currently only accessible via the website, but we’re hoping that it will come integratedinto 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 on you, but not all of it is accurate. The guesswork that it does to determine things about you based on your activity and usage can be the cause of you seeing 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 revealing your likes and preferences can also subject you to greater degrees of tracking. You might even start seeing ads that are so personalized that they feel threatening or predatory. To safeguard yourself from the same, you should learn the ways it’s possible to stop your phone from tracking you.
Your Android phone is tracking you in many ways. Here are eight steps you can take to stop it.
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