Opt Out of Behavioral Ad Targeting by Google/Doubleclick and Yahoo!

Oh yes, finally a way to tell the algo-borgs at Google/Doubleclick and Yahoo! that they should not track your behavior to deliver "more relevant" ads. You do that by visiting a page on each of their websites and click a button which sets a cookie that tells the system to not track your behavior.

Google also links to another page from the Network Advertising Initiative which lists quite a few ad systems you can opt out of.

The pages are:

• Google’s at http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.
• Yahoo’s at http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/opt_out/targeting/details.html.
• The NAI’s at http://networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

While I’m at it, does anyone else find Yahoo!’s page to be much better than Google’s? Think about the usability: it tells you if you’ve opted in or out and explains that it’s per computer rather than per user (very important!!!). I’m just saying that as a landing page supposedly to help consumers, Google’s is a mess compared to Yahoo!’s clean and to the point page. The NAI’s is very good too.