How Account-Level Placement Exclusions Finally Give Advertisers Control Over Google Ads Inventory

 If you’ve been running Google Ads for B2C, retail, or ecommerce brands, you’ve likely had this exact experience.

A campaign goes live.
Spend starts to scale.
Performance looks acceptable at a high level.

Then you open the Placements report.

You start seeing:

• Random mobile apps
• Low-quality websites
• YouTube content completely unrelated to your product or audience

None of this was intentional.
And fixing it has never been clean.

The Problem Until Now

Until recently, placement control in Google Ads was fragmented.

If you wanted to block bad inventory, you had to do it manually at the campaign or ad group level.

In real accounts, this meant:

1. Excluding placements in one campaign
2. Copying the same exclusions into another campaign
3. Forgetting to apply them somewhere
4. Launching a new campaign and repeating the process

This wasn’t optimisation. It was repetitive maintenance.

What Account-Level Placement Exclusions Are

Account-level placement exclusions allow you to block websites, mobile apps, and YouTube placements once, at the account level.

Once a placement is excluded there:

• It is automatically blocked across the entire account
• It applies to all eligible campaigns
• New campaigns inherit the exclusions by default

This removes the need to manage the same junk lists again and again.

Where This Works in Google Ads

Account-level placement exclusions apply to the following campaign types:

1. Performance Max
2. Display campaigns
3. YouTube campaigns
4. Demand Gen campaigns

These are also the formats where automation is strongest and placement control has historically been weakest.

Real Example 1: Performance Max for an Ecommerce Brand

You’re running Performance Max for an ecommerce store selling mid-to-high value products.

After a few weeks, you review placement insights and notice:

• Spend flowing into mobile gaming apps
• High click volumes
• Very low engagement
• No meaningful conversions

Previously, your options were limited:

1. Accept the spend and hope Google optimises out of it
2. Try campaign-level exclusions, knowing new junk apps would keep appearing

With account-level placement exclusions, the approach changes.

You:

1. Identify consistently low-quality mobile apps and sites
2. Add them to a single account-level exclusion list
3. Let Performance Max run within those boundaries

From that point on:

• PMax can no longer spend on those placements
• Future PMax campaigns are protected automatically
• Traffic quality becomes more predictable

This is one of the most practical ways to clean up PMax without fighting the system.

Real Example 2: Retail Brand Running Multiple Markets

You manage a retail brand advertising across several European markets.

Each country has:

• Multiple Display campaigns
• YouTube for awareness
• Demand Gen for mid-funnel

The problem is familiar:

• The same low-quality sites appear across markets
• Exclusions are copied manually
• New campaigns regularly miss exclusions

With account-level placement exclusions:

1. You build one central exclusion list
2. Apply it at the account level
3. Every market and campaign follows the same rules

The result:

• Consistent brand safety
• Fewer manual errors
• Less time spent on repetitive cleanup

Real Example 3: YouTube and Brand Safety

For YouTube campaigns, performance metrics alone are not enough.

Even if CPVs look cheap, showing ads next to irrelevant or questionable content damages brand perception.

Account-level exclusions allow you to:

• Block clearly unsuitable inventory
• Enforce the same brand safety standards across all campaigns
• Avoid relying on campaign-by-campaign checks

This is especially important for upper-funnel campaigns where context matters as much as reach.

How This Changes Things Strategically

Google is clearly pushing advertisers toward automation-heavy formats.

Automation itself is not the issue.
Lack of guardrails is.

Account-level placement exclusions act as those guardrails.

By removing low-quality inventory at the account level, you:

1. Reduce noise in your data
2. Improve traffic quality
3. Give Google’s algorithms cleaner signals
4. Make automated campaigns easier to evaluate and scale

This doesn’t limit automation. It makes it usable.

How to Use This Properly

Because these exclusions apply across the entire account, they need to be handled carefully.

Account-level exclusion lists should focus on:

• Clearly low-quality mobile apps
• Spammy or irrelevant websites
• Inventory that never aligns with your brand or business goals

They should not be:

• A dumping ground for every placement you dislike
• Used aggressively without reviewing impact

When used correctly, they create a strong baseline that every campaign builds on.

Final Thought

This is not a flashy update.

But it fixes a long-standing operational issue that serious Google Ads advertisers have dealt with for years.

Less repetitive work.
Stronger brand safety.
More control over automation, especially Performance Max.

This is one of those changes that looks small in the interface, but makes a real difference when you’re managing Google Ads at scale.