Good and bad about adsense and google monitoring?

[ezitis]

Today I noticed how well Google logs my activities on WWW

AS usual started my day browsing my site and adding some updates. Nothing unusual. Then my friend called and wanted help on his site.
It was about dogs. OK next hour i browsed his site, mad couple search in google for dogs.

Google logged my activity and now when I visit my usual sites I see in first Ad block all the time one advertising about Dogs (targeted exactly to my location). It was so annoying that ad followed me all the time, that I had to click it and check out that web.

resume:

GOOD - Google knows how to serve targeted ads for us by analyzing our activities. For Adsense users it means higher CTR, unless...

BAD - I noticed that Google does not care if i clicked this ad or did not, It follows me in many sites using AdSense. From point of user I will not click this ad any more, because I have already visited that site. So Adsense users and Big G looses money, because they want me to visit again and again that same site :(

I am just curios how long will this ad follow me (already more than hour. I clicked ad on some 10th impression. But after that I see it again and again)

[jatar_k]

if you don't stay logged in, or have the toolbar, then it won't track

this is an element often forgotten when folks are looking at ads on their own sites. Your visitors probably won't see the same ads you see.

[ezitis]

I do no have toolbar, but I could have been logged in.

I understand that users do not see what I see, but they can have similar situation from their browsing activities.

[jomaxx]

There's no point arguing that it causes Google to show the wrong ads. They're the ones tracking everything, and if it didn't work they wouldn't do it.

[jatar_k]

I don't know if ezitis was saying it was the wrong ads, based on behaviour they were very highly targetted

I guess you should surf less about dogs when logged in then ;)

try staying logged in and see how long it takes to learn something new about you

[alephh]

This has been going on for ages. If it troubles you, Internet is full of guides how to clear:

- google search history from google's home page
- browser data, etc

Without knowledge of surfer's interest, people interested in mud&water would see "visit sahara" -ads, and we all would have much lower CTR.

_

[ezitis]

exactly: they were very highly targeted

But I wanted to accent that after visiting site these ads did not disappear and followed me in all my internet browsing sites which had AdSense and showed up always only in first block.

And that is bad (ads are highly targeted but already visited) so no use of displaying them any more so intensively

[jatar_k]

click one and see if it goes away or if they then know you want all things dog

[engine]

I'm assuming you have no spyware or ad ware on your machine. Always worth checking - sites with payloads leaving their nonsense on users machines - it's not as uncommon as you may believe.

[jomaxx]

Again: just because YOU personally didn't want to see THAT one specific ad again doesn't mean that the system is broken. The only reason for Google to factor in recent browsing history is that, on balance, it works.

(Or at least has the potential to do so, subject to ongoing algorithm tweaking)