While working through normal maintenance tasks lately, I’ve been taking a peek at last year’s data since 2024 is complete. I have been spending time reviewing Performance Max placement reports and Google Display Network placement reports galore. This got me thinking that it might be helpful to outline how I do this for others. I’m tag-teaming with other Clixters so we have a comprehensive series for you. Here is part 1!

Let’s first look at how to find your placement reports for Google’s Performance Max and Display campaigns.

Performance Max Placement Reports

To find the placement report for Performance Max campaigns, head to Report Editor. Scroll down to When and Where Ads Showed and click “Performance Max campaigns placement.”

Set your timeframe. In this case, I am reviewing all of 2024 in case there are placements that were missed in shorter-term reviews. The report will only have impressions and the placement name.

I like to add the Placement Type column so I can filter for websites or YouTube channels. In the sidebar, you can search for “Performance Max placement type” and add that column to your report.

You’ll now see all three columns in your report. This is a great time to export your report if you’ll be utilizing Google Sheets or Excel for your review.

Once in Google Sheets or Excel, filter for YouTube video placements. I also like to sort by the highest number of impressions.

In this report, I already see a lot of placements that can definitely be weeded out. Hold on to this report and we’ll share some ideas on how to quickly filter for placements to exclude in Part 2 of our series.

Now that we’ve covered how to pull Performance Max placement reports, let’s look at pulling placement reports for GDN campaigns.

Google Display Campaign Placement Reports

In your Google account, head to Insights & Reports in the left navigation bar and click “When and where ad showed”.

Set the timeframe you want to see and add the columns you want to see data for. The great thing about this report is that clicks, cost, and conversion data are all available which makes it much easier to gauge performance.

In the screenshot below, I have already filtered my data for YouTube channels using the Type filter.

There are no kids channels in the top few placements, which is good to see, but there are a few top channels I recognize, so I’ll be keeping an eye on those.

At this point, I’ll export my data to Google Sheets where I find it easier to filter and manipulate.

Keep both those reports handy as we’ll use them to add filters to weed out kids’ channels and other spammy placements in the next post in our series.