Tech companies are ceding some control over online advertising to consumers.

The measures attempt to address the power differential between online marketing companies and consumers. Marketers, major digital platforms and ad tech companies have had the ability to precisely target individuals based on their algorithmic interests for years — but consumers, for the most part, haven’t been given the tools to ask them to stop.

That upset web users, especially those who have personal reasons for not wanting to see certain ads, such as people who have had miscarriages and don’t want to see campaigns on baby clothes, dieters and teetotalers who don’t want to see alcohol ads.

If you can’t do something as simple as, “Please don’t target me with this,” says Ethan Zuckerman, associate professor of public policy, why spend billions on targeted advertising infrastructure? at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Professor Zuckerman Ever since they stopped drinking in 2017, they’ve been avoiding bourbon and all its reminders. Last year, when alcohol ads started popping up in the “Trending” section of his Twitter page, he got frustrated and couldn’t turn them away. It’s gone – even though the Internet can target advertising more precisely than any medium before it.

To resolve that paradox, some platforms are gearing up to give users more control.

In June, TikTok began allowing users to filter their feed to prevent videos from being tagged with specific words and hashtags, and the company plans to expand this filtering to ads in the next few months. “We hope the change will help ensure advertisers’ content is delivered to audiences who are most comfortable with and interested in their voices,” a TikTok spokesperson said.

Separately, digital advertising executive Lou Masria said Your Button is testing a setting that would allow users to opt out of marketing based on their ongoing online activity, eventually allowing users to limit certain categories of ads on most websites. Alliance, the non-profit organization behind YouadChoices.

The feature, which is scheduled to be widely released in beta mode by the end of the year, aims to get users to click a single button and warn most digital advertising companies that they don’t want to see a certain type of ad, Mr. Mastria said. Users can indicate when searching for a specific category.

Categories in the YouAdChoices test include sensitive topics such as nutrition and fitness, family and parenting, and gambling, alcohol and tobacco, as well as products and services that users may not be able to market, such as consumer electronics, jobs and automobiles. .

The feature was developed to strengthen consumer trust and transparency when it comes to digital advertising, Mr. Mastria said.

“This is an industry that has taken a lot of shots on those fronts,” he said, “so being able to apply things like a new user experience is a very powerful thing.”

The trial follows the release of similar features from Snap Inc.,

Meta and Google, all of which have introduced user preferences over the past five years that can lead to “fewer” ads from certain categories, including alcohol and gambling.

Companies use that language because they can’t guarantee that ads from a certain category will be blocked, because of potential errors and ambiguities in ad classification during upload.

In May, Google said it would expand on the idea by introducing “My Ad Center,” which prompts users to view certain categories of advertisers based on their interests and moods. The company plans to roll out this feature later this year, starting with its YouTube, Search and Discover products.

Opt out to opt out

Allowing consumers to indicate their interests and feelings benefits platforms and publishers: They can tell advertisers that they’re less likely to waste money on the wrong consumer, said Anna Milicevic, principal and co-founder of management consulting firm Sparrow Consulting. Specializing in ad tech.

“It’s in their interest to show that they’re working to improve the ecosystem,” she said. “I don’t think it’s consumer behavior, I think it’s aimed at advertisers.”

But not all platforms are offering customer ad controls.

Spotify, for example, does not offer a switch for customers to opt out of certain marketing categories on its ad-supported product. A company spokesperson said it will give users the ability to report ads, “but in the future this may include giving users more control over the specific ads they see and hear on the app.”

For Prof. Zuckerman, a professor of public policy, Twitter is the platform he wants to eliminate alcohol advertising. In general, he uses an ad blocker in his browser to avoid seeing too many ads on the Internet, but he says ads on Twitter’s “promoted trending focus” will appear free of his authority.

“Not only will I never buy the product [alcohol advertisers are] It definitely took a toll on me,” he said. “This internet advertising pricing idea is a complete failure.”

A Twitter spokesperson said the company is not working on a way for users to opt out of certain categories of advertisers.

Write Katie Deighton at katie.deighton@wsj.com