Google is testing an algorithm that will serve more relevant ads to your Gmail homepage, like location- and interest-based deals, using similar data involved in its Priority Inbox feature.
"Bad ads tend to annoy people. We're trying to cut down on these ads, and make the ones you do see much more useful," Google explained in a support forum.
Previously, Google served Gmail ads based on common keywords found in a user's emails. Now, it will look at some of the cues it uses in Priority Inbox, a feature launched last August that lists your emails based on what it thinks you'll want to read and respond to first. Priority Inbox determines this based on signals like:
1. Who you email
2. Which messages you open
3. What keywords spark your interest (ie. if you open messages about baseball, another email with baseball terms is more likely to be important to you)
4. Which messages you reply to
5. Your recent use of stars, archive and delete functions
Google writes, "Gmail will better predict which ads may be useful to you. For example, if you've recently received a lot of messages about photography or cameras, a deal from a local camera store might be interesting. On the other hand if you've reported these messages as spam, you probably don't want to see that deal.
Google will begin testing the new ad targeting tool with "a few users," before rolling it out widely, the company wrote. Like with Priority Inbox, you will be able to turn off the default setting if you are uncomfortable with Google artificial intelligence mining information from your Gmail activity; Google notes that no humans can actually access your inbox.
In early March, Google introduced Smart Labels, a Gmail Labs feature that lets users filter messages into bulk, forum, or notification folders.