What you need to know
- Google has announced the global rollout of its My Ad Center.
- The new ad control hub gives users direct control over how Google displays ads to them based on their data.
- Google has also launched new advertiser pages to increase transparency about the ads it serves to users.
Google is rolling out its ad control hub worldwide after announcing the service in May at its I/O 2022 developer conference. “My Ad Center” is intended to provide users direct control over how Google uses their data to personalize the ads they see across Google Search, YouTube, and Discover.
The new hub allows you to select from a variety of topics that interest you, making the ads you see across Google’s platforms more relevant to you. My Ad Center can be accessed by tapping on the three-dot menu in ads that appear on Search, YouTube, and Discover. From there, you can directly manage your ad preferences.
Google gets the information it needs to personalize these ads from Web & App Activity and YouTube History. The latest feature also gives you control over which type of ads are served to you based on your interest. On the other hand, you can disable ad personalization completely, but this will result in less relevant ads.
There’s an option to see fewer ads on certain topics, including alcohol, dating, gambling, pregnancy and parenting, and weight loss. Prior to this change, you could only control ads on YouTube and Display. Google is now expanding this capability to Search and Discover. On top of that, you can choose to block sensitive ads entirely.
Your ad preferences apply to ads displayed both on and off Google’s platforms. This means that ads from businesses that use Google tools to advertise on other sites and apps will rely on your choices, too.
Google has also added advertiser pages to improve ad disclosures and provide more transparency to users. These disclosures are available in the My Ad Center panel, where you can view ads from a specific verified advertiser that have run in the last 30 days.
