Google’s New Enhanced Ad Privacy in Chrome
Today, when I opened the Chrome Browser, I was greeted with a notice about Google’s new Enhanced ad privacy features in Google Chrome. I wanted to learn more about it so I could tell you what Google’s Enhanced ad privacy means to you. And this is what I found out…
Google’s new Enhanced ad privacy in Chrome is a set of features designed to give users more control over how their data is used to show them ads. The features include:
AD Topics
Chrome will use AI to assign users to a group of topics based on their browsing history. According to Google, this information will be stored locally on the user’s device and won’t be shared with Google or any other third party.
Interest-based ads
Sites can request any user’s topics from Chrome and use that information to display ads that are relevant to their interests. Users can also choose to block certain topics from being used for ads.
Site-suggested ads
Sites can also suggest ads to users based on their browsing history. These ads will not be based on the user’s topics, but, according to Google, they will still be more relevant than ads that are not personalized at all.
Google claims that its new Enhanced Ad Privacy will give users more control over their privacy while still showing them relevant ads. The company also says that the new features will be more effective at blocking tracking cookies than current ad blockers.
Here are some of the pros and cons of Google’s Enhanced Ad Privacy:
Pros
- Gives users more control over how their data is used for ads.
- More effective at blocking tracking cookies than current ad blockers.
- Still allows users to see relevant ads.
Cons
- May not be as effective at targeting ads as current ad systems.
- Some users will find the AI-driven Topics API to be too invasive.
- No one is sure what effect the new features will have on the revenue of websites that rely on advertising.
Overall, we think that Google’s Enhanced Ad Privacy is a step in the right direction for online privacy. The new features give users more control over their data and make it more difficult for advertisers to track them across the web. But it remains to be seen how effective the new features will be.
It’s important to remember that no matter what you read or what privacy tools you use, you do not expect privacy while using the web. Nothing you do, while you’re on the web, is ever 100% private.