Excluding irrelevant placements without losing useful reach

Start with the placement report and record the placement label exactly as shown. Identify whether the issue is tied to a section, creative or offer, or the publisher as a whole; weak results in one part of a publisher’s inventory do not prove every placement there is irrelevant.

Compare cost, qualified visit behaviour and downstream actions after enough delivery to judge the campaign objective. A low click-through rate alone can hide valuable readers, while a high rate may reflect an overpromising headline; no fixed delivery minimum is stated.

If weak results follow a creative or offer across placements, address that before excluding inventory. If the issue is confined to a section, exclude at that level if the campaign controls allow it; consider a publisher-wide block only when the problem applies across its relevant content.

Keep brand safety separate from performance. A genuinely unsuitable context can justify an immediate placement exclusion; in Display & Video 360 (DV360), blocklists of URLs and apps can be uploaded through the Apps, URL and Channel exclusions/inclusions feature.

Use the narrowest exclusion control the platform offers. Google Ads supports account-level, campaign-level and ad group-level placement exclusions; for Performance Max, use account-level exclusions. In DV360, blocklists exclude listed URLs and apps, while allowlists target listed sites or apps and can restrict scale and reach.

For a Performance Max placement report in Google Ads, open Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Report editor. Under the pre-defined reports section, open When and where ads showed and select Performance Max campaigns placement.

Before a broad block, compare the publisher’s delivery with the campaign’s total delivery over the same reporting period in each relevant campaign. Check whether those campaigns have a different audience; if the report does not show the delivery split, mark exposure as unknown rather than assuming it is negligible.

Record the publisher’s delivery and the campaign’s total delivery for the reporting period before the change. After the exclusion, compare delivery, cost, qualified visit behaviour and downstream actions against that baseline over a comparable reporting period; do not treat an unreported delivery split as zero.

Make one exclusion change at a time. Review the results when the post-change data has enough delivery to judge the campaign objective, then compare cost, qualified visit behaviour, downstream actions and delivery with the baseline.

Treat useful reach as delivery associated with qualified visit behaviour or downstream actions, not clicks alone. If those outcomes change after an exclusion, check whether the issue applies across the publisher or is confined to a section, creative or offer.

Keep an exclusion log with the placement, reason, date, campaign, review owner, reporting period and baseline delivery. Recheck the results after each change, and update DV360 blocklists monthly.

Key Metrics to Track After Exclusion