Sunnyvale (CA) - Yahoo has taken the interesting step of giving its users greater choice in allowing them to opt-out of customized advertising. The company unveiled this new option as part of a letter in response to a Congressional inquiry about customization sent to 33 companies from the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Yahoo said it will let consumers begin opting out of customized advertising which, in an example posted on Yahoo’s blog, might produce an ad offering you the latest fare discounts from your airport to Bangkok while you are searching online for Thai hotels. This new opt-out choice is said to be an expansion on an already existing program "for customized advertising served by Yahoo! on third party networks." This customized advertising, as defined by Yahoo, means "relevant advertising based on your browser’s activities on the Yahoo owned and operated web sites."

Besides this, the opt-out will also give you the option to get off the hook of Yahoo’s web beacons, which are electronic files "allowing a web site to count users who have visited that page or to access certain cookies." These beacons are used for such purposes as "research and reporting" to some of Yahoo’s clients. One will be able to access the opt-out option now, though it won’t take effect until the end of the month, in Yahoo’s privacy center, which the company says is linked at the bottom of nearly all of its pages.

It also plans to add this link to an existing public service advertising campaign it has been running to inform its users about this type of advertising. It should be noted this opt-out though will only apply to the specific browser you are using at the time, Yahoo says, meaning you’ll have to opt-out for each different browser you use. The opt-out option seems like a wise move on Yahoo’s part, but might it not serve consumers better by adding an opt-out link directly at the base of the ad? One also has to wonder - how does this tie into the Department of Justice probe of the Google-Yahoo advertising deal?