Yahoo! has just announced that they have started a beta called the Ad Interest Manager.  This program will allow customers to look-up the list of interests that Yahoo! has placed them under because of their recent online activity.  Then the customer will be able to redesign this list or turn off Interest-based Advertising altogether.  Yahoo! says that this will help them gain users’ trust as well as give their advertisers the most up-to-date information.  If a user has searched for Christmas gifts for other people or news articles for a project, it won’t be stuck in his/her interests forever.  Keeping users in charge of the interests allow advertisers to, hopefully, show ads when they will be most relevant.

Google has something similar with Privacy Ads.  It allows you to see the interests Google has categorized for you and lets you alter the list.  To see more information about Privacy Ads, click here.