To help you reach more potential customers, your ads will now show on content that matches any of the topics, placements, or Display, Video, or Search keywords you target. For example, if you targeted “bikes” as a topic and “cycling” as a Display, Video, or Search keyword, your ads will show on content that matches either.
You’ll also notice contextual targeting simplified into a single page in Google Ads, so you can manage all content targeting types (Topics, Placements, Display or Video keywords, and Exclusions) in a single view. You can find the Content page under the “Audiences, keywords, and content” drop-down menu within the Campaigns 
Note: The "Content" section will only be visible if you have at least one of the following campaign types in your Google Ads account:
- Video
- Display
- Demand Gen
- Search
- Performance Max
- App Campaigns
Additionally, the "Content" section won't be visible if you're viewing a campaign that is not one of these types.
Just as you can target placements in the Google Display Network and YouTube to show your ads (like specific pages, sites, and videos) you can also exclude placements where you don't want your ads to show. In particular, you might exclude websites or domains that aren’t appropriate for your brand.
This article explains how to create placement exclusions to prevent your ads from showing on certain placements on the Display Network, YouTube, or the Search Partner Network. Placement exclusions can be applied at the account, campaign, or ad group level, with account-level exclusions overriding campaign and ad group level settings.
On this page
Before you begin
Here's critical information to know about account-level exclusions:
Subdomains
When you create a placement exclusion, leave off www. to exclude the subdomains, subsites, and subpages under the exclusions. So, if you exclude example.com, you will automatically exclude store.example.com (subdomain), example.com/store (subsite), and example.com/store.html (subpage). But if you retain the www. and exclude www.example.com, the exclusion won't extend to all subdomains, subsites, and subpages. Placement Exclusions for subdomains, subsites and subpages do not work on the Search Partner Network.
Country domains
Different country domains need separate exclusions. For example, to exclude example.com and example.co.uk, you need to add both as placement exclusions.
Limits
You can enter a maximum of 20,000 placement exclusions at a time and a total of 65,000 placement exclusions per account. Manager accounts can create up to 3 placement exclusion lists with a maximum of 250,000 exclusions per list.
Note: Any URL associated with a Google domain (for example, mail.google.com) can't be added as placement exclusions directly.
While you can’t exclude the entirety of youtube.com as a placement exclusion at the campaign level, especially for Performance Max, you can manage YouTube placements in other ways:
- Account-level placement exclusions for specific YouTube content: Add specific unwanted YouTube channels or videos to your account-level placement exclusion list. These are typically managed through 'Content Suitability' settings in your account. Performance Max campaigns will respect these account-level exclusions.
- Content suitability settings: Utilize account-level content suitability settings to exclude categories or themes that might be prevalent on YouTube.
- Video assets: If minimizing YouTube exposure in Performance Max is a goal, consider not providing video assets for your campaign, as this can reduce serving on YouTube.
Add Placement exclusions
- In your Google Ads account, select the Tools tab.
- Select the Content suitability tab.
- Select Advanced settings.
- In the "Excluded placements" setting, enter the URL or search for the content you'd like to prevent your ads from showing on (don’t include “www.”). If you have a list of URLs, you can also select Enter multiple placements and paste the entire list there.
- Select Save.
You'll be able to verify the placement exclusion under "Change history" when you view changes at the account level. New placement exclusions typically take effect within 12 hours.
