Google is in the process of rolling out ‘better ads in Gmail’. As well as an increase in relevancy, Google plans to present users with local deals and offers.
This will come as welcome news to many Gmail users who are tired of being served completely irrelevant ads. Teeth whitening anyone?
As Google said themselves, “Bad ads tend to annoy people. We’re trying to cut down on these ads, and make the ones you do see much more useful. “
In order to achieve this, Google will be tapping in to it’s priority Inbox – a tool launched last August which helps users by filtering out less important mail.
By following the same signals used to identify ‘priority mail’, Google hopes to extinguish non-relevant ads. For example, if you have recently received a lot of mail about MP3 players, then ads and deals relating to MP3 players may be of interest to you.
On the flip side, if you reported messages about MP3 players as spam, or marked them as not-important, ads should not be shown.
Google insists that users’ personally identifiably information is never shared with advertisers, but naturally there are privacy concerns.
But it has to be said that if you’re already sharing information, it’s better put to good use.
As a Gmail user, you’re automatically opted-in to receive ads but You can opt-out of this service in your Gmail settings page.
What do you think? A good move, or a definite opt-out?
