Blogpost

Go to https://adssettings.google.com/ – you may have to log in using the username and password you use for your Gmail account and Android phone. This settings screen is where Google displays your ad profile, a record of the online retailers you use and the products you’re interested in that it uses to deliver ads that are tailored to your interests – these are also more profitable for Google as a company for whom ad sales are a primary revenue stream.

If you don’t want to see personalised ads at all and, more importantly, if you don’t want Google to collect your information to use as part of an ad profile, click the switch button next to “Ad personalisation is ON”.

In the pop-up that appears, click “Turn off”.

It’ll be replaced by a pop-up informing you that “Ad personalisation is OFF”. Click “Got it”, and Google will no longer save new personalised ad data about you, use it to serve you targeted ads, or share it with third-party partners. If you re-enabled Ad personalisation, however, the interests that were previously recorded for you will be re-activated.

If you don’t mind Google using your data, but don’t want it sharing with third parties, leave that button alone. Instead click the Advanced tab below and make sure the box marked “Also use your activity and information from Google services to personalise ads on websites and apps that partner with Google to show ads…” is unticked

A pop-up will inform you that Google will no longer store data from or share your ad profile with its third-party partners. Click Exclude to go ahead with this.

If you just want Google to accurately serve you adverts about things you actually care about, scroll down to take a look through the companies, products, demographic details and interest areas that Google lists for you under the “How your ads are personalised” header. This list will generally be long. Intrusive though it can feel, it’s also rather entertaining looking at the picture of you that Google’s built for marketing purposes, and it can be helpful to have Google’s ad engines show you products that you might actually be interested in. If you just want to fine-tune this so that you get to see more products that are relevant to you, it’s easy to disable unwanted categories.

Click on an interest entry. I’m going to ditch MLM & Business Opportunities because, of all the things MLM can stand for, Multi-Level Marketing is the one I find particularly abhorrent.

A pop-up for the interest item will appear. Click “Turn off” to disable the interest and take it out of your ad profile. The pop-up will close and a small grey bar will appear at the bottom left of the page to inform you that your settings have been changed.