Opt Out of Personalized Ads from Google (Windows)

 

Windows: Opt Out Within Your Google Account

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to focus on how to do this on your browser, though the setting exists on some Android phones as well. Open your browser and head to Google’s “My Account” page while signed in. If it’s been a while since you’ve logged in, you may have to enter your password here.

On this page, you’re looking for one setting in particular: Ad Settings. You’ll find it in the center section—should be the third option from the top. Click it.

This will open the Ads Settings page for your account, but there’s one more hoop to jump through here—click “Manage Ad Settings” to get into the real meat and potatoes.

This page is pretty straightforward. For more information on what exactly you’re opting out of, read through the page—it should give you a pretty good feel for what will change when you opt out. If you’re committed to the idea of a non-personalized ad experience, hit that little toggle on the right side. You can also de-select the checkbox that allows Google to store said ad data.

This will bring up one more popup to let you know exactly what’s going to happen, and if you’re okay with that go ahead and tap “Turn off.” Boom, personalized settings are off.

After you’ve turned off Ads Personalization, a popup will appear with some options to check out Google Contributor and control other ads with AdChoices. Just click “Got it.”

There’s one more thing you’ll probably want to do here: install the DoubleClick opt out extension. This is basically an add-on for Chrome (it’s also available for IE and Firefox) that permanently opts you out of the DoubleClick cookie that Google uses for ads. Basically, this ensures you still retain the “opt-out” status even after clearing history and cookies.

To download the extension, either click this link or head to the bottom of the Ads Personalization page and click the “DoubleClick opt out extension” link. Once installed, it’s active—you don’t have to do anything.

If you’d rather leave personalized ad settings on, but want better control over what you see, you can do that in the “Your topics” section just below where you opt-out of ads altogether. Keep in mind these settings are personalized for you according to your search history, so your options will likely look very different than mine.

If you’re an Android user and prefer not to get in front of a computer to tweak your settings, you can find the same thing in Settings > Google > Personal info & Privacy > Ads Settings. This is basically just a quick link to the Ads Settings page under My Account on the web, so the same results should show up here as highlighted above—thus, just follow the above-listed instructions.