Closing your eyes and driving isn’t a good idea. You may reach your destination, but chances are, you’ll encounter issues along the way. Exclusion lists are similar to your GPS; they refrain from presenting your ads to people who don’t need or want to see them.
In Google’s vast video network, where money is spent by brands, exclusion lists are excellent but rarely applied levers for enhancing performance. Channel, video, and topic exclusion lists enable you to prevent your ads from appearing on non-conforming content that does not align with your brand values or your campaign messaging.
What are YouTube Exclusion Lists?
Exclusion lists on YouTube allow you to prevent your ads from appearing on certain content. These exclusion lists contain particular channels, videos, or content on which you do not wish your ads to run. If you add these exclusion lists to your campaigns, Google’s platform will exclude these options from your targeting.
A YouTube exclusion list is the reverse of inclusion targeting. Rather than informing ad platforms where you would like your ads to appear, you inform them where you do not want them to appear. This form of targeting allows you to select where your ads display while applying automatic bidding.
Why Use Exclusion Lists?
Exclusion lists’ one major advantage is improved campaign effectiveness. By excluding locations where spots are not effective or do not fit, you will use your campaign budget where spots perform better and deliver well. This narrow strategy typically causes more clicks, higher conversion rates, and fewer costs per acquisition.
Brand safety is a valuable advantage. Exclusion lists ensure your ads never appear alongside contentious material, so your brand messages appear where they should. This is particularly useful when you’re working with regulated sectors or brands that have firm content guidelines.
Campaign data improves when you exclude the right places. You take off locations that attract unwanted visitors or clicks from uninterested people, such as children. This produces improved performance data, reflecting true user interest in your products or services.
Why External Exclusion Lists Beat DIY Approaches
It takes experience and time to make whole lists, and most ad teams lack both. You are constantly having to check placement reports, locate channels with issues, and refresh lists per campaign. All this becomes manual, and you might miss coverage while taking longer to catch new issues.
Exclusion list specialists build huge databases with numerous low-quality channels and poor content. They also have teams that specialize in discovering and repairing poor inventories, so you’ll always have the best product.
It’s useful having a scale advantage when you manage numerous campaigns or accounts. You can reuse your external lists the same way across all your ads, safeguarding your brand but keeping your performance robust without having individual lists per campaign.
Best Practices for Optimization
Here’s some advice for those who want to take a DIY approach. Begin by blocking the broad categories, and then narrow down to the actual channels. All of us have predetermined content categories that you can simply block. Blocking the broad categories normally has the greatest impact on the performance of the campaign immediately.
It’s worth regularly monitoring performance, even when you’re using exclusion lists. Review placement reports monthly to discover any troubled inventory that has gotten past your initial filters. Add any new poorly performing products to your exclusion lists to continue refining your targeting.
Consider having separate lists of excluded content for other campaign categories or brand safety requirements. A campaign building awareness about your brand might require tighter exclusions compared with a performance campaign targeting users who are already familiar with your brand.
Thrive on YouTube Today
YouTube exclusion lists shift advertising from opportunistic advertising to advertising with strategy. You secure your brand when you use exclusion strategies, making your campaigns run better while earning you more money.
Choosing whether you will create your own exclusion features or seek assistance from others will determine how soon you will have results. Exclusion list companies provide you with instant access to years of structured information, so you can strategize rather than performing manual tasks. For example, don’t want to advertise to children? Use a developed list and stop this problem instantly!
