Why do you see dodgy ads on my website and YouTube channel, and is it independent?

Every so often someone would complain about dodgy ads on my website. Usually this was men asking why they were getting ads for overseas brides.

My answer – Google tailors the ads to each visitor based on what it knows about you and what you’re likely to respond to. I have no idea what is shown to any visitor, and all I’ve done is enable ads on my content via Google, not for any specific advertiser.

So if you see an advert for say Ford…that’s because Ford are trying to reach people like you, and I’ve not had any discussion with Ford about ads. Ford have run a Google Adsense campaign, and Google has decided to show their ads on my content. So, I’m entirely independent of advertisers and therefore they exert no influence over me.

That usually ended the discussion. However, the comments kept coming and I decided to look into what I could do about it. Turns out that creators can control types of Google ads shown on YouTube and websites, so I did.

Here’s what my settings are for YouTube:

And here’s the settings for this website:

You can also control the ads you see – read this https://support.google.com/My-Ad-Center-Help/answer/12155764?hl=en-GB