Ever felt that what’s really missing from Google Ads is a personal endorsement from your friends? Or that your life is unfulfilled unless your name and face are used to promote products you once clicked ”Like’ on to total strangers? Apparently Google does because in the latest update to its Terms of Service (ToS), which it announced on Friday, it’s reserving the right to add your name and photo to adverts for anything you’ve ever clicked +1 on.

The new rules come into force on 11th November, and will mean that Google ads – the little classifieds that appear on websites, will start to look like this:

In other words, “Hi, I’m Dave Greenway and I really enjoy using…”

Google is calling this new feature “shared endorsements”. When you +1 or share something on the web using your Google+ profile, Google understands that to be an endorsement of that particular thing by you. For example if you give a +1 to anything published by Coca-Cola  Google understands that the same way as you recommending Coca-Cola to your friends. If Coca-Cola decides to purchase advertising through Google, whether it be through the regular search network results that show up when you search for something on Google or the display network that Google uses to place adverts on other sites like blogs, people connected to you on Google+ could see your name and face endorsing that advert.

On the up side, the feature is an opt-in one. But it’s easy to opt-in to these things without realising it. If you tell Google that other people can see your +1s on the Play store, for example, it’s not yet clear as to whether or not this set the flag globally and allow all your +1s to be used as ads.

The only people who will see the advert will be the ones who originally saw your endorsement (the +1). The trouble is that not many of us are careful about who we share stuff with on Google +, or even that we’re aware of when we do it.

(Via: TechCrunch)