Google rolls out My Ad Center to help users better control their ad experiences

Google announced on October 20 a global rollout of My Ad Center feature, as the tech giant aims to help users better control their ad experiences on Google Search, YouTube and Discover feed.

First unveiled at Google's annual developer conference Google I/O in May 2022, My Ad Center expands on the company's privacy controls by enabling users choose to see more ads from the brands and topics they like and less from the ones they don't. The feature will be accessible directly from ads on Search, YouTube and Discover.

For instance, one can choose to see ads across various topics, such as fitness, vacation rentals or skin care. They can also choose to block sensitive ads around categories such as alcohol, dating, weight loss, gambling, pregnancy and parenting and learn more about the information the tech giant uses to show these ads to them and personalize their ad experience.

Google said one can also decide what types of their web and app activity are used to personalise their ads. For instance, if users don't want their YouTube history to be used for ads personalisation, they can turn it off in My Ad Center.

They will also have the ability to completely turn off ads personalisation from the controls available on My Ad Center for ads they see on and off Google and it will automatically apply for all devices they are signed in to their Google account. When not signed into Google, one can still control preferences in Ad Settings, the company said in a statement.

"Online advertising doesn’t need to be confusing or out of your control. My Ad Center builds on our responsibility to strengthen the ways we keep users in control of their ad experiences while ensuring that every day, people are safer with Google '' said Jerry Dischler, VP/GM, Ads at Google.

Apart from this, the company said it was also improving ad disclosures with new advertiser pages. Users can access these disclosures in the new My Ad Center panel and see the ads a specific verified advertiser has run over the past 30 days.