How do I optimize a Google Display campaign by where its ads appear?

A Display campaign’s ads reach people on YouTube, on Gmail and across the Google Display Network (GDN), which Google describes as millions of websites and apps. Each place an ad can show is a placement: a whole website, a page of one, a mobile app or a video. You can pick placements yourself, or leave Google to choose automatic placements from your keywords and other targeting.

One report lists where a campaign’s ads showed:

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Insights and reports › When and where ads showed.
2. 02Select the Where ads showed tab. Google says it shows placement data at the account, campaign or ad group level.
3. 03Set the date range to the last 30 days, and have the Cost, Clicks, Impr., CTR and conversion columns in the table.
4. 04For YouTube, the report opens on channels. To see the videos, tick the channels and select View Details.

The report lists the placements you chose and the automatic ones together. On the Display Network a row is a website, a page or an app. On YouTube it’s a channel or a video, and only for ads on the watch page: ads elsewhere on YouTube, such as the Home feed, are one row named youtube.com.

Google is plain about what the report is not:

• Not a complete list. A placement your ads showed on only a couple of times may be left out. What the report leaves out is the difference between its rows and the campaign’s own total, which it labels Total: Other.
• Not your bill. Invalid traffic is removed from most reports and may not be removed from this one, so its impressions aren’t final and its conversions may not match any other report.
• Not always the whole address. A long URL, or one holding a person’s private details, is cut short.

Google says to exclude poor-performing placements “based on how they compare with your other placements.” It also warns that, with so many placements and so few impressions on each, the report’s performance data “is generally not statistically significant,” and that over-optimizing on it can severely limit where a campaign can show. So the reading has two halves: how far below the rest a placement is, and whether luck could explain it.

1. 01Sort the report by Cost and read from the top. A placement that has spent less than a conversion costs can’t have told you anything yet.
2. 02Take the placement out of the campaign: the campaign’s cost less the placement’s, divided by the campaign’s conversions less the placement’s. That is what the rest of the campaign paid for a conversion. Use the campaign’s totals from the Campaigns page, since the report leaves small placements out.
3. 03Divide the placement’s cost by that figure. The answer is the conversions its spend would have bought at the rest’s rate.
4. 04Set that beside what it brought. Under half is far below, and only worth acting on if luck can’t explain it.

Four rows sold under half of what was expected, and for two of them that proves nothing. diy-forum.example sold nothing on $41.10, where 1.3 sales were expected: a placement exactly as good as the rest does that 29% of the time. weather-now.example sold 1 where 3.3 were expected, which luck gives 16% of the time.

The sum behind those figures is short. With no conversion where one was expected, the chance of that by luck is 37%; where three were expected, 5%. And you aren’t reading one placement. This campaign has 24, and its apps together make 25 comparisons, so a 5% fluke turns up about once among them by chance alone. To keep the chance of any false alarm at 5%, each has to be rarer than 0.2%: a placement with nothing where about 6.2 sales were expected.

One row passes. daily-trivia-quiz.example brought nothing where 8.7 were expected. That is the placement to exclude.

The fourth is the app Brickfall Arcade: nothing on $64.80, where 2.0 sales were expected, which is too little to judge by sales. Read its CTR, since clicks arrive faster than sales do. 648 of its 15,400 impressions were clicked, 4.2%, where the campaign’s other sites and apps drew 0.4%. A rate ten times the rest’s, from clicks that buy nothing, usually means clicks nobody meant to make, most often in apps and games.

Google names two kinds of placement to exclude: ones that don’t fit your brand, and ones “where your ads are showing, but not performing well.”

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content › Content.
2. 02Select Exclusions, then Edit exclusions on the right.
3. 03Choose where the exclusion applies: Campaign, Ad group or Account.
4. 04Enter the placement: a site by its URL, an app by its app ID, a video by its video ID. Select Enter to paste several, or Use placement exclusion list to apply a list you keep.
5. 05Select Save.

Where an exclusion is kept decides what it reaches:

• On a campaign or an ad group. It applies there and nowhere else. An exclusion on a campaign covers all its ad groups.
• In a placement exclusion list. A list is a named set of exclusions you apply to the campaigns that need it. An account can keep 20 lists of up to 65,000 exclusions each, under Tools › Shared library › Exclusion lists.
• For the account. An account-level exclusion reaches every campaign and overrides campaign and ad group settings. An account holds 65,000 of them, counted apart from its lists. They’re also set under Tools › Content suitability › Advanced settings › Excluded placements, and a new one typically takes effect within 12 hours.
• From a manager account. A manager account can keep 3 lists of up to 250,000 exclusions each, and applies them to whole accounts, not to single campaigns.

How you write a site matters. Leave off www. and the exclusion covers the site’s subdomains and pages: example.com also excludes store.example.com and example.com/store. Keep the www. and it doesn’t reach them all. Each country’s domain needs its own exclusion. And a Google domain such as mail.google.com can’t be added directly.

A placement you picked for an ad group is different. Excluding blocks your ads from showing there. Removing it from the ad group’s placements only stops targeting it, and your ad can still show there through the ad group’s other targeting. Remove it when you no longer want to aim at it, and exclude it when you want your ads off it.

Exclude sparingly. Google’s page on exclusions says they can limit your reach, and its page on the report says over-optimizing can leave a campaign less efficient overall.

A Display campaign shows in mobile apps by default. Google lists five controls over where a mobile ad shows: topics, device targeting (computer, tablet or mobile), the app category, single app exclusions, and content exclusions.

One app. On the Exclusions page above, open the drop-down beside the word Exclusions and select Placements, then the pencil icon and Add placement exclusion. Exclude from the campaign, select Enter multiple placements, and write the app as Google Ads identifies it. For an Android app, that is mobileapp::2- followed by its package name, the part of its Google Play URL after id=. For an iPhone app, mobileapp::1- followed by its iTunes ID, the number at the end of its store URL.

A category of apps. Excluding a category keeps a campaign out of the next app like it, where a single exclusion stops only the app you named. Google counts app categories among the kinds of placement, drawn from the Apple App Store and Google Play, and its API guide says a category can be excluded for a campaign, an ad group or the account. The help pages read for this guide give the steps for excluding one app and for targeting a category, and none for excluding a category.

The old shortcut is gone. Google Ads no longer supports targeting apps through the placement adsenseformobileapps.com, and its API guide says that placement isn’t allowed. The name can still appear in your reports.

Placement exclusions name places. Content suitability settings name kinds of content, and Google sets them for the whole account, under Tools › Content suitability. An older campaign may still carry previous settings of its own, which Google lets you view and adjust.

• Inventory type. Maximum, Moderate or Limited: how much sensitive content your ads can run beside. It applies to YouTube, the Display Network and Google video partners, and not to App campaigns.
• Excluded sensitive content. Five categories: tragedy and conflict, sensitive social issues, profanity and rough language, sexually suggestive content, and sensational and shocking. They apply to the Display Network and Google video partners.
• Excluded content types and labels. Digital content labels, from DL-G for general audiences to DL-MA for mature ones, apply to every campaign on the Display Network, and since September 2024 not to YouTube ads. Content types are live streaming videos, embedded YouTube videos, and below-the-fold positions for Display campaigns.
• Excluded content keywords. Up to 1,000, matched exactly as you spell them.
• Excluded content themes. Subjects such as politics, religion, sensitive news, and games that feature fighting or mature content.
• Excluded placements. The account-level exclusions above, up to 65,000.

None of them is a guarantee. Google says content exclusions are made to the best of its ability and can’t promise every related page is excluded. In its own tests, excluding a category cut exposure to related pages by about 90%. Coverage is limited in YouTube’s in-feed ads and Shorts, in Discover, and on mobile and connected TV inventory, and some apps are classed by their main function, not by what they show.

A frequency cap limits how many times your ads appear to the same person. It works differently by campaign type.

• Display. The choice is between letting Google Ads optimize how often your ads show, which Google marks as recommended, and your own cap on impressions a day, a week or a month, for the campaign, an ad group or an ad. Only viewable impressions count toward it. You can’t set it while creating the campaign: open the campaign’s settings afterwards, then Additional settings and Frequency management.
• Video. A cap is set for the campaign only, on impressions, on views or on both, each a whole number a day, a week or a month, under Additional settings and Frequency capping. When a person reaches it, Google stops showing them that campaign’s in-stream and bumper ads.
• Demand Gen. Frequency capping isn’t supported. Google says its system controls impression frequency automatically.

So a Display campaign with no cap is on Google’s recommended setting. A cap of your own earns its place where repetition costs you something: a small audience you would otherwise reach many times a day, or people who have already bought.

A Performance Max (PMax) campaign has a placement report of its own, and it answers a narrower question.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Insights and reports › Report editor.
2. 02Select Performance Max campaigns placement.
3. 03Add the Performance Max placement type column to see whether each row is a webpage, a mobile app or a YouTube video.

The report tells you where the campaign’s ads served and how many impressions each placement received. Google says it “shouldn’t be used to evaluate performance,” since it doesn’t include performance from all channels, and should be used as a brand safety tool. One row, Google Owned & Operated, combines impressions on some YouTube formats, Discover, Gmail and Google’s other properties. Search isn’t a placement, so it’s left out, and search partner sites are listed.

Exclusions for Performance Max are kept at the account. Google says Performance Max respects every account-level placement exclusion and every list a manager account applies, and that the account’s inventory type, excluded sensitive content and excluded content keywords reach it too. So a placement you don’t want a Performance Max campaign on goes under Tools › Content suitability › Advanced settings › Excluded placements, where it also keeps every other campaign off it.

To judge how a Performance Max campaign performs by channel, use Campaigns › Insights and reports › Channel performance, which sets each channel against your conversion goals. The brand in Performance Max guide covers the searches it buys.

A Demand Gen campaign shows on YouTube, Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Google Display Network, and each ad group chooses among them in its Channels setting: All Google channels, which Google recommends for most advertisers, or Let me choose. So in Demand Gen, YouTube, Gmail and Discover are channels you select, not placements you exclude. The Demand Gen guide covers what you set in one, what Google decides, and how to read who it reached.

The Where ads showed tab covers Demand Gen too. It breaks YouTube’s Watch Next, in-stream and Shorts ads out by channel or video, and adds the rest, Gmail, Discover and the Display Network, into one total. For each channel’s results, segment the campaign by network.

Google’s pages don’t agree on a Demand Gen campaign’s own exclusions. Its page about the campaign type and its FAQ say topic and placement exclusions won’t be “generally available at the campaign or ad group levels,” and that content exclusions are managed on the account’s Content suitability page. Its overview of Demand Gen audiences lists excluding placements as a step after the campaign is built. The account-level exclusion is the one every page agrees on.

Display campaigns are moving in. Google says Display campaigns “have a new home” as the Google Display Network in Demand Gen. Its page dates the phased rollout of a migration tool to June 2026. Later, with no date on that page, new Display campaigns can only be created within Demand Gen, and the remaining eligible ones are migrated automatically. Google’s blog post of May 26, 2026 expects the transition to complete by 2027. A migrated campaign can’t be turned back.

• What carries over. Placement reporting, through Where ads showed, and placement exclusions, which Google’s table marks as supported.
• What moves to the account. Content suitability exclusions are supported only at the account level, so a campaign’s own have to be moved there before it can migrate.
• What goes. A frequency cap, since Demand Gen takes none, and Manual CPC, for which Google names Target CPC as the alternative.

Every day Goldbeater reads where each of your enabled Display, Video and Demand Gen campaigns’ ads showed over the last 30 days, and tests every site, app, YouTube channel and video against the rest of its campaign. It raises one that bought under half the conversions its spend would have at the rest’s rate, on at least $20, where so few is unlikely after allowing for every placement tested in the account. Where your conversion value is real, its ROAS has to be under half the rest’s too.

That is the site read above: the finding’s cost, its share and the 8.7 it expected are the table’s first row, set against the 25 comparisons the same reading counted. The finding is advice: it says where the exclusion goes, and Goldbeater drafts no change. For a Demand Gen campaign it names the account-level exclusion, or the ad group’s channels where the placement is Gmail, Discover or YouTube. A campaign’s apps are also tested together, and a placement you picked is tested with the advice to take it out of its ad group.

Eight more checks read where your ads show, and what keeps them off a place:

• A click-through rate too high to be real. A site or app whose clicks were over twice what its impressions would draw at the rate of the campaign’s other sites and apps, on at least $20, by more than chance explains, and whose clicks converted under half as often as the rest’s, or not at all where the rest converted nothing. On the campaign above it raises Brickfall Arcade, at 4.2% against 0.4%.
• Children’s content, games and job sites. Placements a published list or their own name marks as one of those, where together they cost $20 or more: one finding for a campaign and kind, saying whether they converted far below the rest or no measurably worse. It raises Brickfall Arcade here too, as a gap luck could give.
• A word you never want your ads beside. A placement whose name holds a word you’ve listed in the account’s Settings in Goldbeater, with what each such placement cost. With no words listed, it raises nothing.
• No exclusion anywhere. A Display or Video campaign, enabled or waiting to launch, that excludes no site, app or video itself or in an ad group and carries no list, on an account that excludes none. And a Display campaign that excludes no app category anywhere, so it can show in any app.
• A list one campaign lacks. A placement exclusion list missing from a campaign where most campaigns of its type named like it carry it, on at least seven carriers.
• No sensitive content excluded. An account that excludes none of the five kinds while its enabled campaigns, Performance Max and a Search campaign’s Display expansion included, spent at least $20 on the Display Network in 30 days. It reads medium where that is 10% of the account’s spend.
• No frequency cap. A Display or Video campaign without one. For Display the finding says this is Google’s recommended setting, and offers a cap only where repetition costs you.
• Performance Max placements of those three kinds. Raised where together they showed more often than one of the campaign’s placements typically does, by more than chance explains, with their impressions, and saying that Google reports no cost or conversion for them.

A Search campaign that also shows on the Display Network is judged as a network, in the search partners guide. The audit checklist has every one of these as a line to work through by hand.

How do I optimize a Google Display campaign?

Google’s own guide names four things: measure conversions and bid on them with Smart Bidding, use optimized targeting, build responsive display ads, and count engaged-view and view-through conversions. It never mentions a placement, so where the ads appear is yours to read. Open the Where ads showed tab, compare each placement with the rest of its campaign, and exclude the ones far below it on enough spend to rule out luck.

How can I see where my Display ads are showing?

Go to Campaigns, Insights and reports, When and where ads showed, and select the Where ads showed tab. It lists the websites, apps and YouTube channels your ads ran on, the ones you chose and the automatic ones together. Google says not to treat it as a complete list or as a record of billing.

Should I exclude a placement that has no conversions?

Only once it has spent enough. Divide its cost by what the rest of the campaign pays for a conversion: with none where one was expected, luck explains it 37% of the time, and where three were expected, 5%. Reading dozens of placements at once, ask for more than that. Google itself warns that the report’s performance data is generally not statistically significant.

How do I exclude mobile apps from a Display campaign?

Exclude a single app as a placement, written mobileapp::2- and its Google Play package name, or mobileapp::1- and its iTunes ID. To stay out of a kind of app, exclude its app category, which Google’s API guide says a campaign, an ad group or the account can do. The old placement adsenseformobileapps.com is no longer supported.

Do placement exclusions apply to Performance Max?

Account-level ones do. Google says placement exclusions for Performance Max are managed at the account level, and that Performance Max respects every account-level exclusion and every list a manager account applies. They’re set under Tools, Content suitability, Advanced settings, Excluded placements.

Should I set a frequency cap on a Display campaign?

Not by default. For a Display campaign, Google recommends letting Google Ads optimize how often your ads show, which is what a campaign with no cap does. Set your own where repetition costs you: a small audience reached many times a day, or people who have already bought.

Are Google Display campaigns being replaced by Demand Gen?

They’re being moved into it. Google says Display campaigns have a new home as the Google Display Network in Demand Gen: its page dates the phased rollout of a migration tool to June 2026, and says that later, with no date given there, new Display campaigns can only be created within Demand Gen and the remaining eligible ones are migrated automatically. Its blog post of May 26, 2026 expects the transition to complete by 2027.