Google will use AI to optimize how often users see ads

Google says it's investigating ways to preserve users' privacy without impacting their display ads experiences, in part through AI and machine learning. In a blog post this morning, the Mountain View company announced it'll soon introduce an ad frequency feature in Display & Video 360 -- its end-to-end programmatic ad campaign management platform -- that'll tap AI to help advertisers "[respect] user privacy" when third-party cookies aren't present. Google explains that the tool, which it plans to bring to display offerings in Google Ads in the near future, will leverage traffic patterns where a third-party cookie is available and analyze them at an aggregated level across Google Ad Manager publishers to generate predictive models. This will enable it to estimate how likely it is that users visit different publishers serving the same ads through Google Ad Manager, and to optimize how often those ads should be shown to users who lack third-party cookies. Google is already using machine learning in Google Ads, albeit mostly to generate ad suggestions, better match users' searches, and adjust video bids.