• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, December 7, 2009

Yahoo this morning released a new tool giving consumers more control over the ads they are exposed to via the Yahoo Ad Network. The tool, dubbed the Ad Interest Manager, is a new hub on Yahoo were visitors can access a concise summary of their online activity and make adjustments to which ads they are exposed to based on their personal interests.

The tool, which was described as "beta" version, comes as the Federal Trade Commission is set to host a series of workshops beginning today that will focus on online consumer targeting and privacy issues.

The new Yahoo tool seems intended to head off potential complaints from consumers and advocacy groups, by giving users a centralized location for personally managing the relevancy of the advertising served to them. It also provides them with detailed information about the data used to serve them ads, including the "educated guesses" that Yahoo's systems comes up with based on specific interest categories that Yahoo uses to categorize users, and gives them the option of shutting them off.

The system also gives users the ultimate control, enabling them to turn Yahoo's interest-based ads off entirely.

The new tool is currently available as a beta service in the U.S., and Yahoo said it will soon be available to users in the U.K. and Europe.

Future editions are expected to enable users to proactively add categories of interest that Yahoo may have otherwise missed.