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On receiving Ads in Gmail

The Gmail Help Forum often provides me with ideas for my blog. Recently a user asked, "How do I delete my purchase history that Gmail skimmed from my email"? After answering him, I thought of writing this blog as a more descriptive guide.

The first thing to remember is that while the ads are shown in Gmail, Gmail doesn't show the ad. Gmail is a part of the Google Display Network across which chosen ads are displayed. The ads are displayed based on the targeting options chosen by the advertisers and matched with the non-personal data obtained by Google from the users' online behaviour.

To help you better understand this, here is a screenshot of the targeting options available for the advertisers:

and here is what is known about me from the non-personal data obtained by Google from the online behaviour through my test account. You can look at similar data for your own account by visiting the Ad personalisation settings link.
 
As you can see, there are plenty of categories for which I am eligible to see ads for. Some of them I'm very passionate about and some are a fleeting, casual interest of mine. So Google shows me the ads and they show up under Social and/or Promotions tab.


One of the characteristics of these ads is that some of them are expandable. When you click one of these ads, it expands into an email-sized ad with videos and images giving you additional options to interact with the ad.


All of the above is good when the ad has some relevance for me. But what if I do not like the ad, do not want to see such ads again or consider it Spam?

The easiest option is to click on the "x" to remove the ad. Google will display the black banner on the bottom-left asking you to tell them why you dismissed that ad so that they can better customize ads for you. If you wish to, you can click on the link in the black banner and then select your option from those displayed.

 Another option is to do this


which will take you to this page where you can block the specific advertiser as well as report bad ads.

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