• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 14, 2018

Google added one more privacy control to enable or disable ad personalization that the company says will make search and its other products more useful.

The latest change, announced Thursday, redesigns Ad Settings, allowing users of Google's services to turn off targeting signals. It also provides more insight into why certain ads serve up on Google sites and its partner websites and apps. The data serves up through a dashboard Google labeled Why this ad?

The idea, according to Google, is to give people more control around the types of ads they see -- but in the short term, it also could impact a brand’s AdWords performance. There are a few factors that determine how ads are tailored such as estimating interests based on certain activity while those searching on Google, YouTube and its other platforms while signed in to a Google Account.

Information such as age, gender and preferences helps make ads more relevant and useful, but when a consumer no longer wants Google to tailor an advertiser’s messages based on one of these factors, the consumer can choose to turn it off.

Turning off a factor eliminates the tailored ads across Google's services, and on websites and apps that partner with Google to show ads when signed in to their Google Account. The ads will be based on general factors, like the subject of what a searcher might look at, the time of day, or any other factor that continues to produce signals.