How to Exclude Placements in Performance Max Campaigns

Performance Max campaigns allow you to reach your target audience across all Google channels, such as Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, etc., from a single campaign. While this can help you broaden your reach and is an excellent opportunity to maximize your ad’s performance, there’s one downside: you don’t have much control over your ad placements.

Due to this, there is a high chance that sometimes, your ads might show on placements that don’t match your brand or bring poor results. For example, they may appear on low-quality websites, YouTube videos for kids, or apps that aren’t relevant.

That’s why knowing how to exclude placements in Performance Max campaigns is important. 

In this blog, we’ll explain how to exclude placements in Performance Max, explore the different exclusion methods, highlight the benefits, and share best practices to follow.

Understanding Performance Max Placements  

The current supported Performance Max placements (where PMax ads can appear) include: 

1. Google Search Network 
2. Shopping 
3. YouTube 
4. Display 
5. Discover 
6. Gmail 
7. Maps 

Performance Max campaigns use Google AI, which decides where to place ads and how to display them based on the user’s search behavior, intent, your assets, etc. 

While this entire process sounds automated (and is, in fact, majorly automated), you can still use signals such as search themes and audience signals to guide Google AI to optimize your campaigns better and display your ads to the most relevant audiences. 

But while you can guide Google AI to some extent, you still don’t have guaranteed control over your ad’s placements. Your ads can appear on websites or apps that may not align well with your goals. Or those websites might be serving those audiences, which might be inappropriate for your business. 

For example, some advertisers have seen through placements reports that their ads appear across mobile gaming apps, low-quality blogs, or websites with irrelevant content. 

Placements across such channels may not help you make the most of your ad budget. This is because the traffic will be low-quality or irrelevant. 

This is why understanding where your ads are being placed and managing those placements is very important in PMax campaigns. Excluding placements that are not bringing satisfactory performance results will help you avoid wasted ad spend. Moreover, it will allow your ads to laser-focus on those channels that can drive real conversions for your business. 

Methods to Exclude Placements in Performance Max Campaigns (Step-by-Step)

Now, we will look at the two different methods you can use to exclude placements in Performance Max campaigns. But before we proceed further, you must know that you cannot add campaign-level placement exclusions in Performance Max. 

1. Apply Exclusions at the Account Level

With account-level exclusions, you can prevent your ads from showing across specific placements across the Search Partner Network, Display Network, or YouTube. Moreover, it’s important to note that even if you had included specific placements during the campaign creation stages, account-level exclusions will override all those. 

That means if you have blocked a specific site at the account level, your ad will not appear there, irrespective of the campaign settings. 

Also, you must note that as these are account-level placement exclusions, these will apply to all campaign types, including PMax. 

Let’s now understand how to exclude placements in performance max (account-level exclusion):

Step 1. Open your Google Ads account, and click on Campaigns. 

Step 2. Then click on Audiences, keywords, and content. 

Step 3. Click on Content. 

Note: The “Content” section will only be visible under these settings when you have created any of these campaigns in your account: – Performance Max  – Demand Gen  – Display  – Video  – Search  If you are viewing any other campaign types which is not included in the list above, ‘Content’ won’t appear.

Step 4. Scroll down to Exclusions, and click on Edit exclusions. 

Step 5. Then you will have three options: Account, Campaign, and Ad group. Select Account. 

Step 6. Then, you will have the option of browsing or directly entering those URLs (which you can get from the placements report) that you want to exclude. You can also add multiple placements by pasting the entire list of links there. 

Step 7. Save the changes. And that’s it. These placement exclusions will take effect within the next 12 hours. 

There are some important points you must know about account-level placement exclusions: 

• After Google’s recent updates, account-level placement exclusions are also applicable for Search Partner Network. 
• If you want to exclude subdomains, subsites, and subpages, then you should not submit domains with ‘www.’ So, therefore, if you add ‘example123.com’ as an exclusion, Google will automatically exclude pages like ‘example123.com/store’, etc. 
• At max, you can add 20,000 placement exclusions at a time. And you can only add 65,000 exclusions per account. Manager accounts can submit up to 3 placement exclusion lists with 250,000 exclusions per list. 
• You can’t exclude any URL related to a Google domain, such as youtube.com or mail.google.com. 

You must also note that you can add account-level placement exclusions from the content suitability section in your Google Ads account. 

For that:

1. Click on ‘Tools’ from the left-hand side menu. 
2. Then click on ‘Content Suitability.’ 

3. Find ‘Advanced settings’ and expand it. 

4. Expand ‘Excluded placements’. 

5. Then, you can browse for specific placements you wish to exclude or directly enter the URLs. 

6. Once done, save your changes.

And that’s it. The process is complete. 

2. Using the PMax Campaign Modification Form

You can also request exclude PMax placements at the account level using the PMax campaign modification form. 

Here’s how you should fill out the form: 

Important: Ensure that you have admin or standard access to the Google Ads account for which you want to exclude certain placements. This will help expedite the implementation process.

Step 1. Fill out the contact name.

Step 2. Then add the end customer company name (the company that is being advertised)

Step 3. Then, select whether you have admin or standard access to the account.

Step 4. (Optional) Add any email address you would like to CC on this form submission. 

Step 5. Add the Google Ads Customer ID. 

Note: If you manage multiple Google Ads accounts, then avoid adding the customer ID of your Google Ads Manager Account or even MCC ID. Rather, you need to add the customer ID for the individual account.

Step 6. Then, select the type of change you want to request with the form. You have to select from these four options: 

• Keyword exclusion (adding negative keywords) 
• Removing Negative Keywords 
• Exclusion of topics 
• Placement Exclusion

Remember, we need to select placement exclusion. 

Step 7. Then you will have to select a specific placement exclusion action from the following options:

• Exclude at the account level
• Remove exclusions applied at the account level
• Apply MCC level placement lists at the account level
• Remove MCC level placement lists applied at the account level

We will be selecting ‘exclude at account’ level. 

Step 8. In the next step, you will have to download this ‘PMax: Request template‘ and fill it out with all the placement exclusion details. Here’s how it will look:  

Please note that this Excel sheet includes all types of changes, such as keyword exclusions, topic exclusions, placement exclusions, etc. You need to select the Placement Exclusions – URL Level sheet. 

Then, fill out the Action, Ads Account ID, and Placement Exclusion URL. 

Note: If you have more than 65,000 placements, then you should use the Placement Excl List from MCC Ac sheet.

Step 9. Once done filling the sheet, submit it as an attachment. Provide your consent to Google which will authorize one of their Google Ads specialists to make the requested changes to your account. 

Step 10. Submit the form. 

Once you submit the form, Google will review your request. And all you can do after that is wait for the exclusions to be applied to your PMax campaigns. 

You should keep checking the “Content” section of your PMax campaign to check if Google has applied your suggested exclusions. 

Important:  1. Google Ads API also supports account-level exclusions, which are further respected by PMax.  2. Currently, Google allows you to create placement exclusion lists only in MCC accounts. However, you can apply those lists to the connected child account. All campaigns, including Performance Max, will respect that list.

Identifying Unwanted Placements for Exclusion 

In the section above, we learned about the different methods you can use to exclude placements in Performance Max campaigns. But another important question is how to identify which PMax placements to exclude. 

The answer is simple: by using PMax placement reports. 

1. Go to Campaigns in your Google Ads account. 
2. Click on Insights and Reports, and then Report Editor.

3. Scroll down to When and where ads showed. 

4. Click on Performance Max campaigns placement. 

5. The report will open. Select a custom date range. Ensure you select a time frame of at least 3-4 months. 

6. You will get a report like this, where you can see whether your ads appear across webpages or mobile apps. You can also identify if your ads are appearing on sites that are Google-owned and operated or across anonymous placements, where specific domain-level details are not available.

That’s it. You have successfully generated the placement report. Remember, this report for PMax placements will only display impressions for all placements. 

As of now, Google doesn’t support other metrics such as CTR, CVR, etc. 

Once you have the report, check for any low-quality websites or mobile apps that you would like to exclude.  Also, check for all those placements that aren’t bringing satisfactory results. Identify all such placements, save them in an Excel sheet, and then, using any of the methods shared above, you can exclude them from your PMax campaigns.

Strategic Approach to Placement Exclusions

It is important to implement these best practices when you want to exclude placements in Performance Max campaigns: 

1. Regularly monitor your PMax placement reports: Ensure that you keep reviewing your placement reports once in 3-4 weeks. That will help you identify those irrelevant placements that might be wasting your ad spend. Based on that, you can keep updating your exclusion lists. 

2. Don’t Exclude too many placements: Remember, over-exclusion has a risk of limiting your campaign’s performance. By removing too many placements, you might accidentally remove those websites that may have a lot of potential to help you boost your conversions. 

Thus, carefully review each placement, how many impressions it has contributed for a significant time period, and only then finalize your decision. 

3. Use Brand Suitability Features for PMax: Just using placement exclusions might not solve your entire problem. Thus, you can also leverage brand suitability features such as applying negative keywords for PMax campaigns, excluding sensitive content categories, etc., which can help you avoid unrelated, low-quality ad placements.

4. Leverage Audience Signals: Audience Signals in PMax can help you guide Google AI toward better placements. Remember, this is not a direct substitute of placement exclusions, but still you can use this to help Google better place and deliver your ads.  

5. Add a variety of PMax Assets for different placements: As PMax serves your ads across the entire Google Ads inventory, ensure you add optimized assets to cater to all those channels. That will ensure that Google AI creates strong ad combinations for each channel, and never compromises on the placement just because of shortage in assets. 

Benefits of Placement Exclusions in PMax

We will now cover the benefits of excluding placements from your PMax campaigns:

• Avoid wasted ad spend: When your ads aren’t displayed across unrelated or low-quality placements, your ad spend is used efficiently. Otherwise, your ads will keep getting clicks that rarely lead to conversions.
• Improving RoAS: When you direct your ad spend toward better-performing and highly relevant channels, you get more conversions.
• Protect your brand image: Sometimes, when your ads appear across low-reputation websites (which can be sensitive in nature), your brand image gets degraded. These exclusions ensure that your brand identity remains safe.
• Better performance insights: When you remove junk or low-quality placements, your performance data gets cleaner and more reliable. It is much easier to identify which channels are driving results for your business.
• Work around limitations of PMax automation: As most campaign settings are automated in PMax, placement exclusions allow you to guide Google AI toward better-performing Google ads inventory.

Conclusion 

We hope this guide on how to exclude placements in Performance Max campaigns helped you. Remember, removing poor placements is important to ensure that your ad spend doesn’t get drained on low-intent traffic that won’t convert or support your business goals. 

With the right placement exclusions and monitoring the results over time, you can make your campaigns laser-focused and more efficient. 

Best of luck! 

FAQs

1. Can I exclude specific placements in Performance Max campaigns?

Direct campaign-level exclusions aren’t available in PMax. However, you can use account-level exclusions or submit a modification request form to exclude specific placements.

2. How do I access the Performance Max Campaign Modification Request Form?

The form is available through Google’s support page, for which we have shared the link above.

3. How long do placement exclusions take to become effective?

Exclusions typically take up to 12 hours to be applied across your campaigns.

4. Will excluding placements affect all my campaigns?

Yes, account-level exclusions apply to all campaigns.

5. Can I exclude entire app categories or content types?

Yes, you can exclude certain app categories and content types using Google’s content suitability settings. These include options like sensitive content exclusions, content themes (e.g., games, religion, politics), and content type exclusions (e.g., live streams, embedded videos).

6. What is the maximum placement exclusion limit for PMax?

You can add up to 20,000 placement exclusions at once, with a total of 65,000 exclusions allowed per account. Manager accounts can make up to 3 exclusion lists, each containing as many as 250,000 exclusions.

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