Mountain View, California — Google is in the process of showcasing a new ad system for Gmail that it dubbed as “better ads” for its users, which will guess what you are interested in, based on the emails you have read and sent in the past.
Presenting more relevant ads could help Gmail make more money from consumers. Previously, Gmail only looked at the words in the message that users were currently reading. The ads will be customized to suit each specific user based on the emails he or she receives, resulting in “fewer irrelevant ads,” according to the Gmail Help page.
Moreover, the search engine giant says that while this announcement will be rolling out to users gradually over the coming days, the personalized ads would not actually go live for around a month.
Google says that it is employing the same system it has implemented in its Priority Inbox feature, the automated system launched last year that attempts to highlight which of your incoming email is most important.
These signals include things like who sent the message, whether or not you read it, and keywords that appear in the message, which highlights more important emails, Gmail can serve more useful ads that users are more likely to click on. Most importantly, users can opt-out of the new system through Gmail’s settings panel (the default is that you are opted-in).
“For example, if you have recently received a bunch of messages about photography or cameras, a deal from a local camera store might be interesting,” Google said. “On the other hand if you have reported these messages as spam, you probably do not want to see that deal.”
Interestingly, Google claims that by enhancing its existing ads it reduced the number of ads it shows to users by a third, and it promises to continue that trend with this new system. Also, Google reassured users that the scanning of their email inboxes are “fully automated” and that “no humans read your messages”.
Regardless of Google’s assurances that the system is fully automated and no personally identifiably information about users is ever shared with advertisers, the new process is likely to ignite privacy concerns.
However, if you are still suspicious, you can turn off the feature through a new radio button that will soon appear on the Gmail Settings page:
