YouTube is the best video source that can serve millions of high-quality videos. Initial few years when YouTube was picking up it had almost no ads. However, now Google is heavily capitalizing on YouTube by showing frequent ads. These ads are longer and annoying at times.
Google is customizing the ads based on your activity history on Google tools. This includes Google search, Gmail and many more.
I recently had an incident when I felt that Google is also trying to listen to my conversations in my home and suggesting YouTube ads based on that. This is happening with all audio compatible devices like Android Phone, iPhone, and Smart devices like Google Home Pod.
These devices are capable of spying on you, and Google starts doing this without much of prior notice to you.
I had liked the relevant ads for some time, however, I do not like Google listening to everything I say at home. This is a serious privacy issue. To avoid this, I started disabling all voice-enabled apps and also disabled customized ad settings.
After disabling these, I noticed that ads had stopped for 1 day. On the second day, I saw very few ads e.g. just once in 15 minutes or more.
I made a note of all steps I followed, I hope it will help you get fewer ads on youtube for free.
Step 1 : Visit Google Ad Settings Home
Go to https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated – login if required.
Step 2 : Update Topic Of Interest To None
When you scroll down on google ads settings page, you will notice these topics. Remove them all by click the cross on each topic.
The topics should look like below image. All topics will be moved to “Topics You Don’t Like”
Step 3 : Hide Gender
- Click on Edit icon on the Gender field in “Your Profile” section.
You will see this screen with gender options. You can chose “Rather Not say” or add a custom gender.
Adding custom gender could be fun since it is free form field. You can put anything for fun.
I added “Human” in my case.
Step 4 : Move To Top Of The Page And Turn Of Ads Personalization
You should see this screen once Google has turned off ads personalization. On This screen hit “Visit AdChoices” link.
You will be taken to this URL : http://optout.aboutads.info/?c=2#!/
On this page select “Opt Out” – “Select All” – “Opt Out Of All”
Hit continue of below screen.
Below confirmation should show up once everything is complete. In case some Opt-out requests were not completed, you can hit “Try Again” button.
This should help you get opt out from most advertisers. Since you have made your profile not very interesting most advertisers will not target you.
These steps need to be followed by each google account once.
Please share your feedback in comments.