Excluding placements in the Google Display Network (GDN) isn’t just a hygiene tactic—it’s a strategic lever for improving ROI and campaign efficiency.

GDN Placement Exclusions

Google’s AI-driven placement algorithms are continuously improving. Right now, though, they still lack the nuance to fully understand brand suitability or the nuanced goals of a specific campaign. That’s why the proactive exclusion strategies we detail below are important.

Start by considering the context in which your ads appear. Certain websites or app categories—such as mobile games with accidental clicks or sensationalist news sites—may technically deliver impressions, but they rarely contribute to meaningful engagement.

Looking at your placement reports clues you into patterns that you can take action on: high impressions with low conversions, unusual CTR spikes, or bounce-heavy traffic sources. These indicators often point to placements worth excluding.

Audience intent is crucial. Even on high-traffic, reputable sites, your ad might not belong if the user’s mindset doesn’t match your offer. For example, placing a B2B SaaS ad on a recipe blog won’t align with user expectations, regardless of the domain quality.

Brands with international campaigns should also consider cultural and legal sensitivities. Some domains or categories might be legally acceptable in one country but damaging in another.

GDN exclusions aren’t set-and-forget. They’re part of a feedback loop. Make it routine—monthly at minimum—to review your placements and performance metrics. Couple this with developing your own dynamic exclusion list, informed by your brand’s specific needs, vertical trends, and prior campaign data.

Background on the Google Display Network

With more than a million websites across the globe, the sheer size of the Google Display Network is one of the main reasons why display and retargeting campaigns are such strong marketing tools. Spanning myriad topics and interests, reaching a target audience based on what matters to them has never been easier.

A high-performing campaign leverages the Google Display Network by serving highly targeted ads to users somewhere across the mammoth network of websites and publishers. Odds are, if a user is seeing a display or retargeting ad, they are seeing it on a website in the GDN.

However, there are thousands of websites with which brands do not want to be associated. This is why it’s a good idea for advertisers to consider blocking or excluding certain websites for placements of their ads on the Google Display Network.

Why Exclude Some Websites on the GDN?

It may seem counterintuitive that blocking placements on some websites would lead to better campaign performance, but there are instances where blocking placements can be extremely beneficial. There are two main reasons why advertisers should exclude websites on the Google Display Network.

1. Spammy, Inappropriate, or Unrelated Websites

Considering how large the Internet is, it’s pretty clear that no matter what a person is interested in, there is likely a large community and hundreds of websites dedicated to that interest. This covers a gamut of topics from the very wholesome to the very “adult.”

Advertisers probably don’t have the luxury to consider and evaluate every single website on the GDN. That would take hours. But serving ads on a spammy, inappropriate website (or one that’s just not very related to your brand) can have unintended consequences. For example, say a butcher shop sets up a display campaign, and several of its ads are placed on websites whose audiences are passionate about the vegan lifestyle and animal rights. Not a great match.

2. Saving Money on the GDN

Besides avoiding placements because of a mismatch for relevancy or inappropriate misrepresentations of a brand, the big reason for blocking placements on the display network is to save money. When targeting is dialed in and a retargeting campaign is set up correctly, advertisers can reduce costs by eliminating irrelevant websites.

Say that a SaaS software company runs a display campaign but they don’t exclude a whole ton of websites geared towards teenaged and college-aged gamers. These placements eat away at the ad budget, and they don’t contribute meaningful conversions to the campaign.

By eliminating a whole slew of such websites, advertisers leveraging the GDN can ultimately get more out of their campaigns with lower costs if they refine where ads are being placed.

How to Block Placements on the GDN

Seasoned digital marketers may know about website exclusions, but they can be easily overlooked by less-experienced users of Google Ads.

At the most basic level, placements can be excluded by opening your campaign in Google Ads and clicking on the “Placements” tab. From there, hover the mouse over the top navigation and click on the “Exclusions” tab.

Once in this new area, exclusions can either be selected by website, YouTube channel and video, app, or by entire app categories.

It’s important to keep in mind that Google Ads’ exclusion tools don’t cover every website worth excluding from a campaign, and there are thousands it will miss.

Using an exclusion list can be a mighty weapon for any digital marketer working inside the Google Display Network — one you’ll want to come back to over and over again.

The Definitive Website Exclusion List (Free Resource!)

For years, Google Ads professionals have either had to resort to creating their own exclusion lists or borrowing lists of URLs from fellow marketers.

The team at Direct Online Marketing has created the exclusion list to end all exclusion lists.

This list is the culmination of our two decades as an agency running campaigns for clients in Google Ads. (To supplement our internal list, we also took every list of website exclusions we could find online and compiled it all in the above Google Sheet.)

At a stunning 70,000+ website URLs, this list is quite comprehensive as it covers such categories as dating, mobile, gaming, quizzes, sports, and more. And hey, it’s free!

Because this list can be found as a shareable Google Sheet, we encourage you to share this with anyone who would find it useful.

Notes About High-Cost, Low-Performing Categories

If you’ve taken a look at our list, you’ve probably noticed how we broke out several website categories.

High-Cost, Low-Performing – One of our categories addresses a large number of high-quality and reputable websites and publishers (such as The New York Times, CNN, etc.). We’d generally recommend excluding or considering blocking placements on some of these sites for direct advertisers. The placements may make sense if you’re using GDN just for brand awareness and reach. Because exclusions can be a good method of keeping ad costs down, blocking placements on high-quality websites can help stretch budgets a lot farther.

Key Takeaways About Google Ads Placement Exclusions

• Excluding placements on spammy, inappropriate, or unrelated websites helps maintain brand integrity.
• Advertisers can exclude placements directly in Google Ads so that ads reach their intended audience.
• Blocking select websites can improve ROI by reducing wasted spend on placements that don’t convert.
• Direct Online Marketing offers a comprehensive list of over 70,000 website URLs for exclusion.

Final Thoughts

Using the behemoth Google Display Network is how marketers are finding success with display and retargeting campaigns, but not every website is a good opportunity for advertising. By leveraging our comprehensive list of websites to exclude ad placements, advertisers can easily avoid the negatives of placing ads on inappropriate websites and reduce costs associated with their campaigns.

For those of you who share our vision in making this list the best it can be, we thank you and welcome any submissions.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Partner Agency before you reach out.

This article was updated to add additional information on April 21st, 2025.

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So we have talked before about Facebook retargeting (or remarketing as Facebook and Google like to call it) and the options available to target audiences. In October, Facebook announced the roll out of a custom audience feature that allows you to target website visitors and mobile app users within Facebook. Facebook has finally announced that this custom audience targeting is available to advertisers globally, along with an announcement of 5 new call to action buttons – Shop Now, Learn More, Sign Up, Book Now, and Download.

The custom audience feature for websites and mobile apps is available through the Power Editor, Ads Manager, Facebook Ads Interface, and Preferred Marketing Developers.  With this feature you can, for example, retarget visitors who put an item into their shopping cart but never completed a transaction as well as other similar scenarios.

The 5 call to action buttons are not available just yet, but will show in the lower right hand corner of page post ads.  As most advertisers know, calls to action are always an important part of any ad so these new buttons will help encourage users to click.  We’ll be sure to keep you posted when these new buttons become available as well as any new updates.  Stay tuned!

Found Blog Recap

http://youtu.be/6STBvNxcl7U

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Well, here comes Facebook to save the day. In this post, I will tell you about three targeting methods that help advertisers choose the ‘right’ audience. Facebook definitely has the right stuff, baby!

Partner Category Targeting

For a while now, advertisers have been able to target Facebook users based on geography, age, gender, and specified interests. Facebook is taking targeting to a whole new level by offering Partner Category Targeting. With this option, advertisers can target their audience based on data compiled from Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon- experienced data management companies.

For example: Just as car dealerships send mailers to “pre-qualified” individuals based on their credit score, you can do the same. Ok, you can’t get credit score, but you can target people who are likely to purchase a certain make/model, or have ads trigger for users who are high spenders or young/hip moms. Are you a cable company looking to target satellite TV clients? Perhaps you’re interested in users who donate to world relief causes. Facebook’s got you covered!

All partner data is privacy protected- meaning that you won’t know the identities of your target audience. You will only see the size of the audience. Overlay targeting to get a super refined audience, but keep in mind, that this will limit the reach of your audience. If at first you don’t succeed, there are enough options to try, try again.

Facebook Retargeting in Users’ News Feed

Have you ever been to a web site and soon after you start seeing ads for that company follow you around the web? Perhaps the ad you saw even featured the exact blouse or set of golf clubs you were looking at. Did it creep-you-out or did you find it completely timely and relevant? This is called site retargeting and advertisers are experiencing great success with this method of targeting.

How does this tie in to Facebook, you ask? Well, in an earlier post, Justin talked about how Facebook Site Retargeting had become a reality. At the time of his post, ads were only displayed on the right side of the Facebook page. Now site retargeting ads can show within the user’s News Feed.

We love this new targeting option because it’s more than just an ad. In addition to the 25 character headline and 90 character body copy, advertisers get 500 characters for the message copy. This is five times the content available for the right-side ads.

Does it work? It sure does. Advertisers are seeing click through rates 20 to 40 times higher than the right-side Facebook Retargeting ads. No, that’s not a typo!

Action Spec Targeting

Lastly, I want to touch on an announcement made this week about a new method of Facebook targeting, Action Spec Targeting, whereby advertisers will be able to trigger ads based on the recency of user activity. Advertisers are able to target users based on a certain action they performed, such as checking-in to their store, listening to music, or engaging with a specific app. On the flip side, advertisers can also target users who did not perform a specific action.

“Action Spec Targeting” has just been released in beta and only available to Preferred Marketing Developers using Facebook’s Ads APIs. There are limitations to this beta and, like other betas, you can expect it to evolve as Facebook perfects the tool.

In closing, please note that the Facebook Partner Categories are only available for Facebook Power Editor advertisers and the Facebook Retargeting is available through third party platforms, such as AdRoll. Interested in learning more? Or want to share your success stories on Facebook Targeting? Comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

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What Is Retargeting?

Before we get into some of the neat ways people are using retargeting for extended reach and conversion, let’s start with the basics.  Skip to the next headline if you’re already familiar.

I like to refer to retargeting as a second bite of the apple.  Some other people call it ‘cyberstalking,’ while still others call it ‘creepy.’  Some online marketers just call it “effective.”  Here’s how traditional retargeting works:

Friendly Visitor (or FV as she will now be known) visits your site.  FV has a cookie uploaded to their browser.  FV leaves your site.  As FV goes along her merry way, she visits other Web sites who sell remnant ad space through a third party network.  Utilizing this third party network for retargeting, your ads continue to follow FV across a variety of Web sites.  You have control over a variety of factors.  Depending on who you’re using for retargeting, these include:

• Bid
• Bid type (CPC, CPM, CPA)
• Ad type (image, text, video, dynamic) and variation
• Length of time the cookie remains on the browser, assuming FV doesn’t wipe it clean.  Varies from instantly up to 30 days.
• Different messaging based on what page was visited
• Different messaging depending on whether the person has converted or not
• Which sites and types of sites are eligible to show your ad (brand protection).

How Well Does Retargeting Work?

Like with all forms of internet marketing – and really, life – your mileage may vary.  But all things being equal, advertisers typically see a ton of ad impressions at a very low cost.  Often times we see that they pick up a number of conversions at a good conversion rate and low cost per conversion, though the scale often isn’t there unless the site has huge traffic volume.

Retargeting or Remarketing: What’s the Difference?

One of the platforms offering retargeting, Google AdWords refers to it as remarketing?  Why?  I have no idea – ask whoever is in charge of their branding.  There’s no difference.  It’s kind of like if Pittsburgh were a company that produced rubber bands and they called them ‘gum bands’ while the rest of the world just kept calling them rubber bands.   But, what is really nice is the ability to run retargeting campaigns directly out of your paid search account with Google.

Creative Uses of Retargeting

With the basics out of the way, let’s talk about some interesting ways retargeting is being used today:

• Rectifying shopping cart abandonment. Lose people during the shopping cart process?  Target just the people that added items to their cart (or made it to a specific page), but didn’t complete their order.  Offer them a coupon or free shipping or however you want to entice them to finish their purchase.
• Saving the lead. Similar to shopping cart abandonment, but for lead gen.  Encourage persons who made it to one of your offer pages, but didn’t sign up.  Just be aware that the person may have chosen to give you a call instead of filling out a form.
• New ad offering for publishers. One of our truck dealer clients forwarded us an email from a publisher in their industry offering their own retargeting.  Randall Reilly is offering their advertisers and truck dealers whom they’d like to become clients a pretty cool deal.  They will serve up an advertiser’s ads to people who have visited their site.  I don’t know any specifics so I can’t endorse it, but love the idea.  Kudos to Randall Reilly!
• Search retargeting. Here’s a really fun one.  As mentioned above, traditional retargeting when someone has visited your site.  How else would they get the cookie on there?  If you have a strong click through rate, maybe you’ve captured 5% of the people who have searched. The other 95% is lost forever – or are they?Well, some enterprising platforms have come up with a solution and allow you to retarget people who have searched for a particular term, but not visited your site.  I’m pretty sure it’s done with magic cookies – which one would assume are different from magic brownies – but the possibilities are endless here.  We especially love retargeting folks who have searched for your competitors.The three search retargeting industry leaders  – Chango, Magnetic, and Simpli.fi – offer key differences from one another.  Their minimums range from $5k to $30k per month.  As of right now, Simpli.fi is the only one offering a self-service platform, although Magnetic has one in beta that is supposed to launch Q1 2012.
• (Update) Cross Channel.  Standard retargeting is not limited to just your Web site.  You can drop cookies anywhere where people are using the internet to reach you, including email and social media properties like facebook.  Hat tip to Caroline at Retargeter, a self-service retargeting platform, who mentioned these in the comments.

Update 2: Chango reached out to provide a nice graphic called the 7 Types of Retargeting. You can click on that link to download, or read more from their blog post on the same subject.

Update 3: Facebook opened up its ad exchange (FBX) to facebook retargeting in December.  Now you can site retarget to visitors when they’re on facebook.

Hope this recap is helpful.  As with most of the topics about which we blog, if you want our Pittsburgh marketing firm to handle your retargeting efforts, let us know – we’d love to help!

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