Change Your Website Privacy Policy for Adsense Interest Based Ads

Interest Based Advertising - Google Says Change Your Privacy Policy

The big news about Adsense today is that Google have sent out a message to all webmasters that use Adsense on their websites informing them that they should change the Privacy Policy on every website they have showing adsense advertising.

This requires the webmasters to add information regarding the DoubleClick DART cookie which Google will now serve to publisher websites when visitors visit.

Interest Ads for Adsense is a new concept just released by Google into the Adsense arena and it allows them to serve ads, which are more relevant to your visitor’s past browsing experience or because of preferences the visitor has set up in their Google account.

As an Adsense publisher you can Opt Out of serving interest-based Adsense ads to your visitors, but unfortunately even if you do opt out, Google says you still have to change your Privacy Policies on the sites where you show Adsense. Thanks Google!

What Are Interest Based Ads and How Do They Work?

Checkout this Video to see Google’s explanation on how Interest Based Advertising works from a user perspective. It is very informative and makes the whole thing easy to understand, including how the DoubleClick Dart cookie is involved in the process.

If you are an Adsense Publisher don’t forget to change your privacy policies. Google says you have until April 8, 2009 to make the necessary changes to reflect the use of interest-based advertising.

How To Opt Out Of Showing Adsense Interest Ads

Also if you want to opt-out of showing the Interest based Adsense adverts on all your publisher sites then just visit the relevant page in your Adsense account at Google.

Here is a simple procedure you can follow to do this:-

In order to ensure that you DO NOT SHOW Interest Based Ads on any sites:

• Login  to your Google Adsense account.
• Go to the My Account tab.
• Scroll down to where it says Interest Based Ad Preferences.
• Click in the Do not show ads based on interest category checkbox.
• And then just Save Changes

That’s it - You have opted out!

I have also opted out until there is a bigger consensous of opinion and perhaps some real data on whether this is good for Adsense publishers or not.

What’s your view ?

Based on the information provided by Google at their Advertising Cookie and Privacy Policies page, here’s the text I added to my Adsense sites’ privacy polices: