Google has taken its advertising offerings to the next level with the adoption of "interest-based" ads. Going beyond serving ads that are relevant to the content on each Web site you visit or search you perform, users will be able to fine-tune their ad preferences to see exactly the type of stuff they are interested in.According to Google, this is something its advertisers have been asking for for a long time. This type of advertising will give advertisers a better way to get their ads in front of the people who are most interested in those specific products or services.

Susan Wojcicki, VP of product management, explains, "Today we are launching 'interest-based' advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest -- say sports, gardening, cars, pets -- with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads."

In other words, if you visit a lot of information technology Web sites, such as InformationWeek.com, Google will cater the ads you see based on that browsing history. If you're like me and visit a lot of music- and guitar-related Web sites, you'll see more ads for amplifiers, guitar strings, and concerts.

What I find most interesting about this new ad program is that it lets end users fine-tune and control the sorts of ads they will see. Wojcicki writes, "We have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you. You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn't deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice."

I visited the Ads Preferences Manager and filled out a whole bunch of interests. Now I'll have to sit back, do some surfing, and see if I notice any change in the types of ads that are served to me.

For now, this program is in beta. Google didn't say how quickly it will expand the program beyond those sites.