Cras wrote:
Advertisers go to Google and say "I want to show this ad for Football to Men in their 40s", choose the relevant buckets, and away you go.
Yes. One small addendum: when more than one advertiser has declared interest in buckets you match (ie all the time), there is a computerised real-time auction. The ad you see was the highest bidder. This happens regardless of whether it was likely to be more or less relevant to you.
For example, holiday tour operators will spend big money buying out searches for keywords like “Florida” in January with very broad targeting. Doesn’t matter if there’s nothing in your profile that suggests you’d go on holiday to Florida and you were looking it up for climate change info — if the advertiser bids high enough, you can still see adverts for Disneyworld.
Quote:
I think there's a Google page where it lists the things it thinks you like, but buggered if I can remember where that is.
https://adssettings.google.com/