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How Google Collects Data to Personalize Ads

admin — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 10:18:55 +0000

Google is not just the largest search engine, with billions of queries each month. It also powers a large portion of the internet’s display ads through the Google Display Network.

According to SEMrush, the Google Display Network:

Serves ads across roughly 2 million websites and 650,000 apps.
Includes 65 of Comscore’s top 100 sites.
Reaches 210 million unique monthly U.S. users and 90 percent of global internet users.

Those are astounding numbers. But how does Google know which ads to serve you? In this post, I’ll review the ways that Google personalizes ads.

Ad Personalization Profile

Google does most of its tracking through a user’s account. If you’re logged in on your phone or browser, Google is accumulating a lot of data. And it’s willing to show you.

To see what Google believes you’re interested in, navigate to Ad Settings. Once logged in, you’ll see a page like this.

Note the toggle to turn ad personalization on or off. It is checked on by default. Note, also, that the interests at the bottom are based on usage of Google properties such as Google.com or YouTube, as well as “websites & apps that partner with Google to show ads.” Since GDN reaches 90 percent of the global internet audience, this bucket could include most websites and apps.

Interest Categories

The screenshot above shows four interest categories. But the full list is 94. Clicking on a category shows additional info on how Google determined your interest.

Let’s address Google’s methods of collecting data. I’ve grouped them by the source, using my own descriptions: “You told Google,” “Your browsing informed Google,” “Your Google usage told Google,” and “Your non-Google usage told Google.”

You told Google. Demographic info such as age and gender comes directly from your Google account. This is information that Google requests during the creation of your account.

Your browsing informed Google. Some of the interests are from cookies, wherein you visited a site or app that placed a cookie in your browser, which triggered remarketing ads from GDN. This is how you keep seeing GDN ads containing items that you viewed elsewhere, such as a pair of shoes on an ecommerce site.

My profile, for example, includes Walmart, a site that I have visited.

Your Google usage told Google. These interest categories are inferred based on “your activity on Google services (such as Search or YouTube).” So if you’re searching, like me, for “Avengers: Endgame” trailers or watching the “Endgame” trailers on YouTube, then Google infers that you have an interest in “Action & Adventure Films.”

Your non-Google usage told Google. These interest categories are the same as for Google properties, but now Google infers based on your activity from non-Google sites. Again, this could be almost any website worldwide given the reach of Google’s products.

Managing Your Data

While it collects a lot of data about you, Google is entirely transparent about it. You can view that data at “My Google Activity” The page provides detail about what Google has recorded. For me, it includes searches I performed while using Gmail as well as websites I visited with GDN ads, which feed data back to Google. It’s eye-opening to see how much is here, especially if you’re using an Android-based phone.

Google will still track information about you even if you are not logged in. Cookies from sites you have visited are stored in your browser. Unless cleared regularly, they provide data to Google and other remarketing platforms.

You can delete the data that Google saves about you. The “My Google Activity” page has an option to remove all this information manually. Google gives users control over data collection, storage, and personalization. You can view data and delete it. Just don’t complain when you start seeing ads that are unrelated to you or your interests.

In summary, Google collects a lot of data to improve targeting — and results — for its advertisers. At the end of the day, Google is a publicly-traded company that is trying to earn a profit for its shareholders.

Source: https://www.practicalecommerce.com/how-google-collects-data-to-personalize-ads

7 Website Redesign Tips for Better Results

admin — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 10:18:55 +0000

1.Mobile – Friendliness and Speed: Smartphones are increasingly becoming the devices of choice for viewing websites. About 50% of the local searches are started on a smartphone. The smaller screens are the norm now and the website design and content placement must be aligned to that. Speed is the other facet of mobile viewing and it applies equally to the desktop version too. A website must load under 3s to maximize conversions. This is a sum total of the time taken to ping the website and load the images and content. When you redesign a website with a lot of image content, use image optimization to minimize load time. Speed is especially important to smartphones because these are multipurpose devices and users might have to toggle back to important apps before the page loads.

2. SEO: Many of the older websites are not Search Engine Optimized. They simply cannot compete with the newer websites that sometimes use sly tricks to get to the top of Google results. Since more than 90% online viewing begins with search engines, your content should be revamped according to the current SEO trends for greater visibility.

3. Outdated Design: The web design techniques have evolved drastically in the past few years. Whatever you were doing in 2012 is yesterday’s news. It’s time to redesign your website if it simply looks old and outdated. A new website with bold, new-age aesthetics will tell your audience that you are adaptable to the latest trends. It also gives the impression that you are improving with time instead of pushing the same old values.

4. Rebranding: Has your brand had a metamorphosis in the recent years? Has it changed your brand positioning, your identity, your core values or your scale of business? Are you thinking global instead of national now? These are all good reasons for you to redesign the website. Your website is the online face of your brand. And when your brand emerges anew, the online face should make a change too.

5. Flash: The single biggest reason why old websites annoy people now. Flash is outdated and no longer supported by the search engines and web browsers. Facebook doesn’t want it, Mozilla will hear no more of it and iPhones are done with it. A bunch of other platforms like HTML5 and CSS3 have replaced it and its time we bid adieu to this resource-hogging, unsecure platform.

6. Visitor’s discontent: The user behavior on the website is telling of whether it’s time to redesign your website. With any web analytics tool, you can tell how well visitors convert. If they bounce off right from the Home Page, you know you have an issue. It could be the content, the navigation or the information structure.

We should analyze the new dynamics of the target audience as the first step of redesigning a website. The new site should focus on creating an invaluable user-experience for them.

7. Your discontent: Is your website so bogged down by the old design that it can’t accommodate the new changes? When you try to add more information, image or links, if your website resists or gets more complicated to navigate, it might be time to redesign the whole thing.

Source: http://blog.indizine.com/website-redesign-tips/