Yeah. What is the deal with blocking IBAs, anyway?

Previously, visiting AdSense "Interest-Based preferences" said -
Visitation information from my sites will not be used to help create interest categories.
(no mention of "not allowed to show")

NOW, it says -
Ads based on user interest categories are not allowed to show. Visitation information from my sites will not be used to help create interest categories.

MY preferences have a red check mark (turned off). They have never been turned on. And yet, I am bombarded by ads for something I searched for MONTHS AGO. Relentlessly. I cannot escape them. So, WHAT GIVES?

Apparently, "Ads based on user interest categories are not allowed to show" is pure BS, just like jetteroheller says. What are we missing here?
.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 7:13 pm (utc) on Dec 15, 2011]

I did not search for the flight, I typed driect the URL
of a German vendor for cheap flights.

Yep, I've noticed that recently. Only yesterday I went direct to a major online-only electronics site, a few minutes later I went to statcounter and the first ad up was one from the electronics site.

Neither site was searched for yet G served up the ad.

Coincidence? No way, I was tracked and G wonders why I delete all cookies and cache several times a day...thanks for the privacy G, back to trying to use a browser with nothing enable!

Google bought a company that thought it could predict what kind of ads users wanted to see based on what they were previously doing. Now to a simpleton mindset that kind of predictability would make sense. However back in the real world, people don't work that way.

Regards...jmcc

We are all being tracked all the time, via our smartphones, our internet browsing, public surveillance cameras (supposedly for catching speeders and criminals) and who knows what else. It is a whole new - and frightening - world of Big Brother.

NOW, it says -
Ads based on user interest categories are not allowed to show. Visitation information from my sites will not be used to help create interest categories.

I'm not sure though to what extent this may or may not override an advertiser's decision to remarket you.

Google bought a company that thought it could predict what kind of ads users wanted to see based on what they were previously doing. Now to a simpleton mindset that kind of predictability would make sense. However back in the real world, people don't work that way.

Regards...jmcc

I was only in Manila for the Gusi Peace Prize. All laureates hat been in the same hotel. When I booked the flight, there had been ads about cheap hotels in manila, but I was not for a cheap hotel there, I had to book the recommended hotel.

During the 10 days, I was with my wife in Manila, the sun of my wife from her first mariage should watch over our doughters (10,13)

So I booked a flight for him Bukuresti - Salzburg.

I get now also several ads for Bukuresti.

I think this sort of ad placing strategy reduces income, because valuable ad space is wasted for not performing ads.

If you are seeing ads for the sites you have already visited, its "remarketing" (the site drops a cookie on your machine and goggle checks the cookie when you visit sites running adsense)

If you are seeing context-sensitive ads for other suppliers based on that site-view... I dunno! :(

In the days before, this behavior ads used up 20 to 50% of my ad space. Yesterday 100%. Maybe that's the reason, why yesterday, my revues halved.

I mean when all other visitors have also seen ads based on purchases some month ago.

Just reloades my start page, again the same crap with hotels in manila. 300x250 and 160x600 ad block with image ads.

Now this ad vendor made it up to my URL filter

Now to a simpleton mindset that kind of predictability would make sense. However back in the real world, people don't work that way

Now I might simply be old and cranky but the more we find young whizz kids coming along at places like Google with their pie in the sky ideas the more I see things screwed up.

As a grand-daughter says we do it because we can. And that's usually in connection with bizarre rubbish. Who's brainwashing these kids?

After blocking the "hotels in Manila" ads, I see now KLM airline ads.

I had been flying with KLM from Munich to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Manila.

But I will never use KLM again. Amsterdam is the worst airport in my list of bad airports.

I have an ASUS UL30 notebook with only 12 hours working on batteries. So I try to recharge at every airport before the next flight. I want also to connect to the internet.

In Amsterdam, I found only a power socket 200m away from the gate in 2m height. Coming back from Manila, the customs worked so slow, that it was not possible to recharge my notebook before the flight to Munich.

So I will never use KLM anymore.

Here is why visitors will sometimes see IBAs on a site that has opted out:

Even if you choose to opt out of displaying ads based on interest and demographic categories, your site(s) will continue to show ads based on user interactions with an advertiser, such as visits to advertiser sites.

[support.google.com...]

Now I might simply be old and cranky but the more we find young whizz kids coming along at places like Google with their pie in the sky ideas the more I see things screwed up.

It could be the same problem that Microsoft ran into years ago. Many of its intake were the supposedly best and brightest straight from colleges. The problem was that most of these people had no real experience. The result was a load of products of dubious reliability (remember the BSOD?). Then Linux, Apache and Open Source massacred Microsoft in the internet market and left it highly dependent on its desktop/db market. Microsoft learned from their mistakes though. I think that Google may have to undergo the same painful learning process.

Regards...jmcc

It's not Adsense, It's Analytics.

Every site you visit that has Google Analytics, you are tracked "not conspiracy theory, facts".

So if you visit a site for X that has Google Analytics you are now logged.

If someone wanted to target people who went to sites about X Google Allows them to.

THIS IS SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!

Google could allow a competitor to target people who visited your site on all Adsense sites they visit afterward.

This is why i :
1.Block Google Analytic on my PC "Change google-analytics.com to 127.0.0.1 in my host file on windows"
2. Use an Alternate Analytic Tool "Pwik"

What Google does with Analytic Data is criminal, but most webmaster haven't read the terms or realize the impact.