Privacy Changes Required for Google Adsense Publishers
Google have introduced a new feature in Google Adsense, which is called interest-based advertising, Basically, rather than Adsense just showing adverts to readers based on content on a page, it will soon be showing adverts based on a users activities. So in theory, if you spend most of your time browsing websites about baby clothes, then you may well see a baby clothes advert appear on this page, even though we do not write on this topic.
This enhancement requires that website owners update their privacy statements to inform users about Google’s use of cookies in displaying adverts, and also to advise that people can opt out of the interest-based advertising scheme if they desire.
Website owners need to make changes to their site’s privacy polices by April 8, 2009.
Recommendations from Google.com:
Google Advertising Cookie and Privacy Policies
What is the DoubleClick DART cookie?
The DoubleClick DART cookie is used by Google in the ads served on publisher websites displaying AdSense for content ads. When users visit an AdSense publisher’s website and either view or click on an ad, a cookie may be dropped on that end user’s browser. The data gathered from these cookies will be used to help AdSense publishers better serve and manage the ads on their site(s) and across the web.
What should I put in my privacy policy?
Your posted privacy policy should include the following information about Google and the DoubleClick DART cookie:
- Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on your site.
- Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet.
- Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.
Because publisher sites and laws across countries vary, we’re unable to suggest specific privacy policy language. However, you may wish to review resources such as the Network Advertising Initiative, or NAI, which suggests the following language for data collection of non-personally identifying information:
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.You can find additional information in Appendix A of the NAI Self-Regulatory principles for publishers (PDF). Please note that the NAI may change this sample language at any time.
One of the things that made contextual advertising so revolutionary was it being on topic. So the question for Adsense publishers will be does the click through rate and therefore the income from Adsense go up or down because of the ads no longer being relevant to the publisher’s content?
This could be a disaster for publishers.
Yep, my thoughts too Brad. It could go either way. However, my biggest worry is not CTR, but actual value of the ads. Some publishers try to improve their pages to attract the better paying adverts, but may find that suddenly CTR increases, but eCPM decreases. I should think that on the most part this is a good thing for non-MFA websites though. I think that Google’s main aim is to actually reduce the effectiveness of MFA (made for Adsense) sites while still ensuring that quality sites show adverts that are relevant to the page and the audience. I also hope that it will not be a matter of 100% of ads being interest-based to ensure that there are some ads relevant to content. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.
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