Google launches behavioral ads

Google today rolled out a new ad program that delivers advertising based on watching what users do online – an approach that it strongly criticized telecom service providers for using last summer.
Targeting ads based on prior user activity is typically called behavioral advertising – though Google took pains to dub its approach “interest-based.” Regardless of what you call it, Google is clearly watching what users do when online, aggregating that data and then delivering targeted ads.

“We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the Websites people visit,” said Susan Wojcicki, Google vice president of product management. “Our advertisers and publisher partners have been asking us for a long time to offer interest-based advertising.”

Google strongly criticized such an approach in filings in an inquiry into online advertising at the House Energy and Commerce Committee last summer, specifically targeting telcos that would use deep packet inspection (DPI) technology to track user activity.

By comparison, Google’s approach uses a Web-based tracking “cookie” that follows users across multiple Web sites. Google examines that cookie to ascertain user interests and then delivers ads based on what it’s gleaned. In those filings, Google spent much of its response noting its targeting efforts do not leverage network-based DPI, claiming that much of the government’s inquiries about ad targeting “stem from concerns about that particular model for online advertising.”