Google Rolls Out Improved User Control Over Ads You See

We've all been there, you look at a product that catches your eye and add it your cart to see what shipping would be. You decide the product isn't for you and move on with your day. The problem is that the reminder ads that pop up on every website you visit for the foreseeable future trying to lure you back to buy the product you know you don’t want get really annoying. Google feels our pain and has rolled out some new Ads Settings features to help us break up with these ads once and for all.

Google has new additions to "Ads Settings" and "Mute This Ad" tools that give more control over the ads we see on Google, on websites, and in apps. If you don’t want to see those reminder ads that follow you all around the web, you can mute the reminder ads on websites that partner with Google for showing ads (which is most websites).

Google wrote, "Reminder ads like these can be useful, but if you aren’t shopping for Snow Boot Co.’s boots anymore, then you don’t need a reminder about them. A new control within Ads Settings will enable you to mute Snow Boot Co.’s reminder ads. Today, we’re rolling out the ability to mute the reminder ads in apps and on websites that partner with us to show ads. We plan to expand this tool to control ads on YouTube, Search, and Gmail in the coming months."

The new settings will allow you see information about reminder ads and then control which advertisers can show you these ads. Google has been offering a "Mute This Ad" feature since 2012 that lets you block ads you don’t want to see. Google notes that it received over 5 billion bits of feedback telling it that most people use the feature to mute ads that aren’t relevant to them. It used that data to pare a million ads from its network.

Mute This Ad is updated now in two important ways. Google wrote, "First, the tool will now recognize your feedback on any device where you are signed in to your Google Account, based on your account settings. If you mute an ad for Snow Boot Co. on your smartphone, it will also be muted on your laptop."

Google intends for the new features to give web surfers more control over what they see in ads and to make the ads less annoying to users. Better control over ads isn’t all Google has been up to this month. Google also updated Chrome 64 this week and gave it an improved pop-up blocker and HDR video support.