Google has added a new feature to its 'Mute This Ad' feature, which allows users to mute reminder ads. The new option will be visible as a new control in Ad Settings and will sync across devices, which means if a user mutes an ad on their smartphone, it will also be muted while surfing the web on their laptop. As per Google’s blog post, the new tool will allow users to exercise more control over the ads they view along with more transparency.
In layman terms, reminder ads follow a user across sites to remind them of buying the item which they added to cart but didn’t check out. Giving an example of the ad, Google said, “You visit Snow Boot Co.’s website, add a pair of boots to your shopping cart, but you don’t buy them because you want to keep looking around. The next time that you’re shopping online, Snow Boot Co. might show you ads that encourage you to come back to their site and buy those boots. 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.”
The new feature will soon be rolled out to company’s other services like YouTube, Search, and Gmail in the coming months. Additionally, Google is expanding controls for an ads feature which was implemented in 2012 allowing users to mute ads that they don’t want to see anymore. The company also said that based on the feedback of more than 5 billion users, they removed nearly 1 million ads from their ad network in 2017.