What the heck? I just went into my “Promotions” tab on my Gmail account and slipped in with the information about messages I’d received was an advertisement. I don’t want ads in my inbox, I already get enough spam as it is! How can I block Google from polluting my Gmail inbox with unwanted advertisements?
Considering how much Google makes available for free through its many services like Gmail, I suppose we shoudln’t be surprised by the company’s desire to make a few dollars through advertisements becoming more overt and even more pervasive, but it is a surprise when instead of Gmail using its crowdsourced antispam filters to keep ads out of your inbox, it actually charges companies to put ads IN your inbox.Â
But wait, it gets a bit worse. Why? Because you can’t actually opt out of the inline advertisements.Â
Again, I can’t really blame Google and I know that my Gmail account is now my primary inbox, receiving and filtering through hundreds of email messages on a daily basis. And storing literally gigabytes of old email messages in a search system that lets me sift throught them in fractions of a second. Yeah, I’m rationalizing. 🙂
Anyway, here’s what you can tweak…
First off, let’s see an ad in the wild. Here’s one, for Publisher’s Clearing House:
Notice that it’s not quite the same format and it identifies itself as an ad too. More importantly, notice the “X” on the right side. A click and the ad vanishes from your inbox.
Click on the “i” adjacent to the Ad delimiter and it shows a bit more information:
Click on “Ads Settings” to learn more…
Now there’s a bit of a dubious trick here because as you’ll see in a moment, I have already opted out on Google sharing my age with advertisers, but now they’re “inferring” my age anyway. Hmmm…
You can block a specific advertiser, but in terms of all the ads? Not so much. Click on “Control your ads settings” to see the bad news:
Scroll down past the specific information that you’ve said Google can share with advertiers or not and you’ll end up seeing the opt-out settings:
However, click on it and…
That’s the price of Gmail now. You are going to see ads, you just have control over how well they target your interests and demographic data. So it’s your call, but before you leave Gmail in a huff, realize that most of the other web-based email services are likely going to be adding ads inline to your inbox any day now, since Google was nice enough to break the ice.Â
Me? You can still find me on Gmail.