How to Block Your Ads From Running on Specific Websites and Apps

by Andrea Taylor | Nov 20, 2017 | Campaign Strategy, PPC Tactics | 1 comment

Whether your clients don’t want their ads running on specific websites or performance is bad, there comes a time that you will likely need to exclude your ads from specific sites.

With interfaces changing all the time, I thought I would put together a list of how to do this in a couple of the major channels.

Google AdWords

Here is how you go about making exclusions in the new AdWords interface.

Select the campaign you’d like to make the exclusion in, then navigate to Placements in the left column.

Select Exclusions at the top, then the blue plus sign button.

You then have the option to select YouTube channels, videos, websites, apps or app categories for your exclusion. This is quite the update from the old interface.

You can also create a placement exclusion list in the Shared Library. You can find more about creating those lists here.

Excluding Apps

If you’d like to exclude apps, you can use the “adsenseformobileapps.com” to exclude placements on all apps. If you’re wanting to exclude placements on specific apps for an All Features campaign, here’s how to do that:

For Apple devices: Find the app in the iTunes app store, enter the iOS app ID which is in the URL of the app in the app store plus “.adsenseformobileapps.com” behind the ID. As an example, for the app Words With Friends, your exclusion would look like this: “1196764367.adsenseformobileapps.com”.
For Android devices: Find the app in the Google Play Store, enter the ID portion of the URL (the portion after “?id=”) plus “.adsenseformobileapps.com”. Using the Words With Friends example, your exclusion would look like this: “com.zynga.words3.adsenseformobileapps.com”.
For more information on the exclusions, check out this AdWords Help article.

Bing Ads

In Search and RLSA campaigns in Bing, you will need to set your exclusions at the campaign or ad group level.

For sake of ease, the examples below outline how to go about adding campaign exclusions.

Scroll down to the Advanced Settings section and select “Websites” under the Exclusion category.

Enter the URL with or without the https/http or www. portions. If you’re looking to exclude specific pages, you can do that as well.

A few tips to remember from Bing:

You are not able to exclude Yahoo or Microsoft sites (like msn.com).
You can specify a maximum of 2,500 URLs to exclude.
Each URL must specify the domain name, and can specify one subdomain name and a maximum of two directories.
Duplicate URLs are not added.
Ad-group-level website exclusions override campaign-level website exclusions.

If you want more information about exclusions, you can get that here.

Facebook

Facebook offers two different ways to make exclusions: category exclusions and block lists. If you want maximum coverage, I would recommend leveraging both where you can.

Category Exclusions

This is done at the ad set level. Navigate the ad set you’d like to edit and scroll down to Placement > Advanced Options.

There are currently only 5 very broad categories available. That’s why I would recommend also utilizing a block list to cover your bases – you can never be sure how specific sites will be categorized by the channels.

Creating Block Lists

These lists will prevent your ads from appearing on certain sites and apps in the Facebook Audience Network, Instant Articles/publishers, and eligible videos of Pages included in the Facebook in-stream placement.

Unlike category exclusions, block lists can be leveraged at the business, ad account or ad set level.

To create the list, create a .CSV or .TXT file of the website domains, app store URLs and Facebook pages that you want to block. Put one URL per line here.

Once the file is saved, navigate to Business Settings within Business Manager. Select Block Lists on the lefthand navigation.

Click “Create Block List” and then the blue “Create Block List” button.

Previously utilized or uploaded block lists will appear here.

Upload your file.

You can view the exclusions and double check that Facebook categorized them correctly with the Type column.

Applying Block Lists at the Ad Account Level

So that you don’t have to remember to include your block lists in every campaign and ad set you create, you can apply at the account level in Business Manager. To do this, navigate to Business Settings and select Block Lists again.

Select the Block List you want to apply and select “Assign Ad Accounts.”

You can also select to apply this change to all ad accounts which will apply your changes to all future campaigns.

Applying Block Lists at the Ad Set Level

This is easiest to do in Power Editor. Select the ad set(s) you want to apply the block lists to.

Scroll down to Placement > Advanced Options (same spot as where you apply category exclusions).

Click Browse to locate your Block List.

Upload your Power Editor changes.

In LinkedIn, you can exclude your ads from appearing on certain sites and apps in the LinkedIn Audience Network in two different ways. Similar to Facebook, you can create your own block list or you can select specific predetermined categories in the interface.

Creating Block Lists in LinkedIn

Select the account and navigate to Block Lists in the Account Assets drop-down.

Select Upload Block List.

Similar to Facebook, the list should be a .TXT or .CSV file. You should include any websites, iTunes app URLs or Android Play Store URLs that you want to block. You’re limited to 20,000 exclusions per file. It can take up to 48 hours for LinkedIn to process your list.

Once it’s processed, you can apply your block lists to your campaigns.

Applying Block Lists to LinkedIn Campaigns

Navigate to the Audience tab within your campaign. Scroll to the bottom where the Audience Network settings live. Type in the name of your block list, select it and save your changes. (You can also upload block lists within the Audience tab.)

Category Exclusions in LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a good amount of categories for exclusions. You can type in the category or browse the list. Add your exclusions and save your changes to apply the exclusions to the campaigns.