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In a move that reportedly is drawing some criticism from electronic privacy advocates, officials at the Internet’s search leader this week announced that they’re poised to begin targeting ads based on user preferences.

 

In a company blog entry here, Susan Wojcicki, Google (News - Alert) Inc.’s vice president of product management, described the new initiative as a way to “create more value for everyone.”

 

“Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers,” Wojcicki writes. “Advertising is the lifeblood of the digital economy: It helps support the content and services we all enjoy for free online today, including much of our news, search, e-mail, video and social networks.”

 

Google is calling the new program “interest-based” advertising, and it’s being rolled out on a test basis now on company-owned sites, including YouTube.

As Reuters (News - Alert) reporter Alexei Oreskovic writes here, the move follows a similar play by Yahoo Inc, whose advertising program is based on an individual’s online activity.

 

The “interest-based” program marks Google’s first foray into an area that raises privacy concerns from groups such as the Electronic Information Privacy Center.

 

As Andrew Frank, an analyst at market research firm Gartner, reportedly told Oreskovic, advertisers are under more and more pressure to be able to tie as much marketing spend as they can to direct sales revenue.

 

Naturally, Google is no stranger to privacy concerns.

 

As TMCnet reported, a group of Japanese professors and lawyers recently called on the Internet’s advertising and search leader to get rid of a service that gives users detailed street-level images via satellite.

 

According to Reuters reporter Yoko Kubota, the group – calling itself the “Campaign Against Surveillance Society” – says that the “Street View“ feature of Google Maps offering violates rights to privacy.

 

Kubota reports that the group’s leader – Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of constitutional law at Sophia University in Tokyo – believes that Google’s giving Web users the ability virtually to drive down a street and look around, violates human rights.

 

“It is necessary to warn society that an IT giant is openly violating privacy rights, which are important rights that the citizens have, through this service,” Kubota said.

 

Yet Google, as it defends Street View as showing public places only, defends its developing advertising method against accusations that it violates privacy.

 

“We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube (News - Alert),” Wojcicki writes. “You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google’s ad serving.”

 

The company also created a tool, the Ads Preferences Manager, which lets users view, delete, or add interest categories associated with their browsers so that they can receive ads that are more interesting to them.

 

Also, Wojcicki says, users can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network by going here.

 

“To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn’t deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice,” she says.