Are Our Ads Still Appearing Even After You Made A Purchase? Here's What You Can Do

Intrusive online paid ads can not only be annoying but also inconvenient and detract from your overall user experience. Most visual or text ads you encounter online are part of retargeting campaigns. Retargeting is a popular form of advertising where marketers utilize online tracking technology like web cookies to remind you of products/services after you leave a website without completing any transaction.

Marketers conduct retargeting through Google Ads, Facebook retargeting other retargeting advertising platforms. Retargeting works with search, apps, and website banner ads. Generally, when you make a purchase from a certain advertiser, the retargeted ads from the advertiser should stop following you around online. However, sometimes this isn't the case leaving you with no choice but to block/hide the ads.

Adblocking isn't a refined process, and you can't completely block all ads without caveats, as they are the lifeline of many apps and websites. Nonetheless, there are several options when it comes to hiding such online ads. Herein is an overview of how you can hide or block online paid ads on various platforms.

Blocking Google Ads

There are several types of Google ads, including personalized ads, search ads, video ads, shopping ads, and Google Display Network ads. Personalized ads are the most frequent and annoying. If you seek to stop personalized Google ads, you simply opt out of Ads Personalization.

If you are using the Chrome desktop browser, below are the steps to switch off personalized ads:

1. Sign in to your Google account.
2. Click "Manage your Google account" and then "Data & personalization."
3. Scroll down to "Ad Settings," then click on "Ad personalization." Click on the "Turn Off" slider.

If you encounter a Google ad while browsing a website or app, you can follow the steps below to hide ads from that advertiser:

1. Click the Remove X button at the top right section of the ad.
2. Click on "Stop seeing this ad" or "Report this ad," depending on your platform.

To hide an ad appearing on Google search:

1. Click on the downward-facing arrow next to the ad.
2. Click on "Why this ad?"
3. Turn off the slider to hide ads from that specific advertiser

How to Block Facebook Ads

There are limited ways of blocking Facebook ads. You can influence the types of Facebook ads by customizing your profile settings. Below are the steps:

1. Click on the account icon on your Facebook page and select "Settings & Privacy," followed by "Settings."
2. From the left panel, select "Ads."
3. Click "Advertisers" to check the organizations whose ads appear on your feed. Click "Hide Ads" to hide ads from specific advertisers in the "Advertisers You've Seen Most Recently" tab.
4. Click on "Ad Topics" to decide the ad topics that appear in your feed. You can review the acceptable ad topics in the "Manage Ad Topics" section.
5. Click on "Ad Settings" to prohibit Facebook from using your browser history to push personalized ads.

Follow the steps below to hide ads showing on your Facebook account from a certain advertiser:

1. Tap on "..." in the top-right corner of the ad
2. Tap "Why am I seeing this ad?"
3. Scroll to "What you can do," then tap "Hide all ads from this advertiser."

How to Hide Bing Ads

To switch off personalized ad tracking on Bing, you must opt out of customized ads on all Microsoft sites. Below are the steps:

1. Navigate to choice.microsoft.com or click "Settings" on the hamburger menu on Bing's homepage.
2. Select More and click on "Personalization."
3. On the Personalization settings page, select "Advertising Preferences" under "Other privacy settings."
4. From here, toggle "Personalized ads in this browser" OFF. If you've signed in to your Microsoft account, you can turn off "Personalized ads whenever I use my Microsoft account."

How to Block YouTube Ads

If you encounter an ad on YouTube, below are the steps to easily hide the ad:

1. Click on the info icon at the top right of the ad.
2. Click on "Stop seeing this ad."

    

The most effective option (but will cost you) to avoid YouTube ads involves subscribing to YouTube Premium. YouTube Premium allows for a better experience across YouTube, YouTube Gaming, and YouTube Music. If you use YouTube regularly, purchasing a premium subscription is a viable option for ad-free content plus other additional features like background playback, video downloads, and personalized playlists.

References:

• https://www.androidauthority.com/block-youtube-ads-trick-1128296/
• https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/2662922?hl=en
• https://privacysavvy.com/security/safe-browsing/disable-ad-tracking/
• https://bunnystudio.com/blog/how-to-block-facebook-video-ads-methods-that-work/
• https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2017/03/09/how-to-turn-off-ad-tracking-in-google-bing-and-yahoo/
• https://smallbusiness.chron.com/block-advertisements-pages-chrome-49233.html