I watch a lot of YouTube: the “Screen Time” setting on my iPhone tells me 90 minutes this week, and that’s only on my phone; I watch as much or more YouTube on Apple TV.
This means that I “Skip Ad” hundreds of times a month, and get annoyed by a lot of advertising that is mis-directed at me. Ads for Ford F-150 trucks and for the Christian Heritage Party abound.
I’ve experimented with turning off what Google calls “ad personalization,” but that makes things ever worse, as, whether by design or happenstance, the torrent of ads I see then are loud, annoying and offensive.
In attempt to stanch the worst and most annoying, I set out to edit my “How your ads are personalised” settings for Google (and thus YouTube).
Before starting, here’s how Google has me pegged:
- 45–54 years old
- Accounting & Financial Software
- Action & Adventure Films
- Apparel
- Autos & Vehicles
- Books & Literature
- Camera & Photo Equipment
- Canada
- Career Resources & Planning
- Coffee & Tea
- Collaboration & Conferencing Software
- Combat Sports
- Cycling
- Electronics & Electrical
- Food
- Football
- Gourmet & Specialty Foods
- Green Living & Environmental Issues
- Greetings Cards
- Hockey
- Home Appliances
- Home Automation
- Home Furnishings
- Home Improvement
- Household Income: Upper Middle
- Indie & Alternative Music
- Kia
- Kitchen & Dining
- Lexus
- Local News
- Luxury Vehicles
- Mazda
- Microwaves
- Mobile Phones
- Motorcycles
- Movies
- Music & Audio
- Music Streams & Downloads
- Network Monitoring & Management
- Networking
- Nintendo
- Office Supplies
- Online Video
- Performing Arts
- Pets
- Photographic & Digital Arts
- Product Reviews & Price Comparisons
- Refrigerators & Freezers
- Restaurants
- Rock Music
- Science Fiction & Fantasy Films
- Shopping Portals
- Skiing & Snowboarding
- Sports
- Travel & Transportation
- TV Documentary & Non-fiction
- TV Dramas
- TV Sci-Fi & Fantasy Shows
- Urban Public Transport
- Women’s Interests
After (using Google’s obviously-purposefully-hard-to-use) altering my settings, I ended up with:
- 45–54 years old
- Books & Literature
- Canada
- Coffee & Tea
- Cycling
- Electronics & Electrical
- Food
- Gourmet & Specialty Foods
- Green Living & Environmental Issues
- Indie & Alternative Music
- Office Supplies
- Performing Arts
- TV Documentary & Non-fiction
- TV Dramas
- Urban Public Transport
Let’s see if this works.
Comments
I've also turned off the ad customization and have been living in the bottom of the dumpster-fire that is the generic ads. Without using by browsing behaviour to figure me out, they just seem to assume I have a toe-nail fungus that needs treatment.
Interesting summation of person ;-) And a good reminder to dive into that myself.