This is a project that attempts to answer this very question, and expose how much your ad activity could be worth according to Google’s algorithms.

In 2019, Google made 162 billion dollars in revenue. A large portion of this was made from its proprietary advertising service, Google Ads.

When you use Google to search for anything from financial information to local weather, you’re given a list of search results generated by Google’s algorithm. The algorithm attempts to provide the most relevant results for your query, and, along with these results, you may find related suggested pages from a Google Ads advertiser.

Advertisers pay Google each time a visitor clicks on an advertisement. A click may be worth anywhere from a few cents to over $50 for highly competitive search terms, including insurance, loans, and other financial services.

1. Visit takeout.google.com. Make sure you are logged into your personal Google account.
2. Select My Activity and deselect everything else.
3. Select Multiple formats and change from HTML to JSON.
4. Click All activity data included and select Ad. Deselect everything else!
5. Scroll down and click Next Step; click Create Export.
6. Wait for the archive to arrive in your inbox, it should only be a few minutes.
7. Download the archive using the link sent to you. Unzip the takeout file and find the MyActivity.JSON file.
8. Upload your JSON file HERE.
   

June Lee

Yang Shen

Xin Xin

Special thanks to Parsons School of Design (AMT) for funding this project, and Jon Packles for providing the technical direction direction to make it possible.