Display buys impressions on millions of sites and apps, and part of that inventory exists purely to collect impressions. The placement report is the only window onto where your money goes, and exclusions are the only door you can shut. This lesson teaches you to read the report, to recognise a junk placement in ten seconds, and to exclude where exclusions genuinely work.
The placement report
Campaigns → Content → Where ads showed (Display, video) and the
PMax placement report (limited, but it exists). Each row: a domain,
an app (mobileapp::…) or a YouTube channel, with impressions, clicks,
cost and conversions. Sort by clicks and by cost; also look at
rows with lots of impressions and an odd CTR.
The signs of a junk placement
| Sign | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Ridiculous CPC (€0.01-0.05) with lots of clicks | Cheap traffic because it is worth nothing |
| Odd CTR (very high for Display: > 2-3%) | Accidental clicks (apps) or non-human ones |
| Zero conversions with hundreds of clicks | Nobody buys from there |
| Generic or absurd domain (random words, hyphens, odd TLDs) | A site built for ads |
| Copied content, dozens of ads per page, no author or contact details | A farm |
| Children's game apps, torches, wallpapers | Children's clicks and accidental ones |
| Time on page (if you can see it in Analytics) of 0-2 seconds | Instant bounce: traffic that doesn't look |
| Several domains sharing the same IP, the same publisher ID or the same template | A network of farms |
Visit the site. If in ten seconds you cannot tell what it is or who runs it, it is junk.
The levels of exclusion
Content exclusions (campaign)
Checkboxes for sensitive categories (tragedy, sexual content, weapons, sensitive social issues…), inventory types (standard / expanded / limited) and content types: embedded video, apps, parked domains, content that has not been labelled yet. Tick what you don't want from day one.
Excluding app categories and all apps
If you are not promoting an app, most businesses are right to exclude all apps (excluding the app placement by category or globally). App inventory is legitimate for games and apps; for a law firm, it is not.
Excluded placements (campaign)
Specific domains, apps and channels, added by hand or from the report (tick the row → exclude). They apply to that campaign.
Placement exclusion lists (account)
Tools → Exclusion lists → Placements. One list applies to several campaigns and at account level (Account settings → content / placement exclusions). This is the level that matters, because it is the only one Performance Max obeys: campaign-level exclusions cannot be set in PMax; account-level ones do apply. There is a per-list limit (thousands of entries): when it fills up, start another list.
The routine
- Weekly (with Display/video running): the report by clicks; exclude the junk into the account list; visit the doubtful ones.
- Daily if optimised targeting is on or you have PMax with a big budget: junk inventory arrives faster than once a week.
- Monthly: review the list (is it still growing? are there network patterns — same TLD, same template?) and each campaign's content exclusions.
- When launching any Display/video/PMax campaign: apply the account list before the first euro.
Why the job never ends
Farms create new domains every week, change names and move content from one site to another. Excluding a domain today does not exclude its sibling tomorrow. There are two strategies: reactive (exclude what turns up, for ever) and proactive (detect the networks —IP, publisher, template, registrant— and exclude the whole family, including the domains that have not yet spent a euro of yours). The second one needs tools; that is the fraud module in the Advanced level.
💡 Ninja trick: Ninja Shield does both every night: the Site Analyzer scores every domain you appear on (content, ad density, trust signals such as a CMP, a trust seal or a company registration number, age) and the farm detector groups domains by IP, name servers and AdSense publisher ID to exclude the whole network, in the account-level exclusion list — where PMax obeys. And because farms repeat across clients, what one account learns protects the rest.
What you should remember
- The placement report, by clicks and cost, every week (every day with expansion or a large PMax).
- Junk signs: ridiculous CPC, odd CTR, zero conversions, absurd domain, filler apps, networks with the same fingerprint.
- Content exclusions and app exclusions from day one.
- Account-level exclusion lists are the only ones PMax obeys: apply them before the first euro.
- Reactive is not enough: farms are networks; exclude families.