How to use placement exclusions

Placement exclusion is a tool that enable you to specify pages, sites, apps, and videos you don’t want your ad to appear on.

This helps you filter ad locations that are underperforming or unrelated to your ad topic e.g., a baby accessories ad showing on sports website.

To use this tool, you need to prepare a placement exclusion list containing the URLs of the placements you don’t want. Then apply this list to your relevant campaigns.

Here are a few steps to guide you:

• From your Google Ads dashboard click on “tools”.
• Under shared library click on “placement exclusion lists”.
• Tap on the create list button if you don’t have an existing list or want to create a new one
• Enter a name for your exclusion list
• On the add placement exclusion you can choose any of the location categories. (app, YouTube channel, website, etc) listed if placements you are targeting are under one category.
• You can also scroll down to the enter multiple placement section and paste the affected URLs.
• Once done click on “save” to create your list.

Now, on your placement exclusion page you can apply your created list on all or specific numbers of running campaign.

How it works

Yes, you can update your exclusion list at any time. Just head into the placement exclusion page and click on the list:

• Tap on the blue plus button and select edit.
• Paste the new URLs you want to exclude in the box and click save.

What should I be mindful of?

Google placement exclusion doesn’t apply your list automatically to new ads even when you click all to apply the list to all your campaign.

As such, if you want to apply the exclusion on your new ad you need to head back to the exclusion page, click on your exclusion list, and select apply to campaigns.