This new method of advertising from Google, called "interest-based" advertising, goes much deeper than the current targeted advertising practice of Website-based ad targeting. It practically tracks the user’s Internet usage habits in order to serve an ad better suited for you. 

 

Google is launching today the beta test of the interest-based advertising system. The Web searching company said the new system will greatly benefit the end user because it will offer better-suited ads. 

 

 "We believe there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you," Google's VP of Product Management Susan Wojcicki wrote on the Official Google Blog.

 

“We’re looking to make ads even more interesting,” says Brad Bender, a Google product management director.

 

The system will use electronic markers on the user’s Web browsers called cookies in order to track the visited Web sites. E.g., if you visit NBA.com quite often, you may get some ads on sites that sell basketball jerseys, ticket to NBA games in the town you’re in or something of that sort. 

 

In its incipient stage, the targeting will involve placing people in one of the approximately 600 categories and 20 to 50 Google-approved advertisers will run ads. Later this year, the system will expand, the company said. 

 

As expected, the new targeting system gives privacy advocacy groups head aches. However, Google offers a way to turn off the feat via a plug-n for the Web browser that maintains the opt-out choice.