Smart Way To Exclude Placements On Smart Display Campaigns

Smart Display campaigns are a convenient solution to handling the various tasks accompanying a standard display campaign. Using 3 optimization technologies, namely Automated Bidding, Automated targeting and Automated Ad Creation, you can simply whip up a Smart Display campaign in 5 minutes and let it run itself. It works and thus, you don’t have to go through the  agony of creating multiple ads in various dimensions, no constant lookout for bids and the hassles of targeting. But you also lose control!

Generally, across all display campaigns, you can add negative placements to ensure you stay on relevant sites. Display campaigns which are setup manually allow you to target specific placements & also the crucial ability to exclude undesirable placements. However, the same can’t be said about SDC campaigns. If you try to simply select a placement and exclude it from the campaign, you would face an error of “This operation is not supported by this campaign”.

Another method is to create a negative placement list in shared library and apply the list to all your smart display campaigns. However, you will be surprised to NOT see your SDC campaigns while selecting the display campaigns.

Don’t be disheartened if you have tried all the above and not found a solution. It’s only for the lesser mortals to find it. So here it is – A Workaround Solution – A smart way to exclude placements is to add account level negative placements.

  1. Download placement report from your smart display campaigns into an excel sheet
  2. Filter and keep only the negative placements you wish to exclude
  3. Go to placements of any standard display campaign of your choosing, and select the exclusions tab.
  1. Click on the pencil button and click on Exclude Placements.
  2. Select Add Placement Exclusion. In the Exclude from dropdown, select Account.

NOTE: If you select “Use Placement Exclusion List”, you would only be able to use the negative placement list on that particular campaign and not on an account level.

  1. Click on Enter multiple placement and paste the placements from the excel sheet you wish to negate.
  2. The placements are then added on an account level which now also applies to Smart Display Campaigns


Impact :
After using this simple technique of excluding placements on an account level multiple times, my Smart Display campaigns now show on relevant sites increasing the lead quality along with 20% increase in my CTR.  Placement exclusions are a necessity, a required hygiene check, and Smart Display campaigns cannot be an exception.