Ad Placement Exclusions may lead to poor performance
Ads are shown to your target audiences on the websites and apps they visit. While exclusions give you control, blocking too many domains or apps can limit your campaign's reach and effectiveness. We recommend using them purposefully to keep your performance high.
General Exclusions give you control over where your ads appear and who sees them. Once configured, these settings will be applied to all your AdRoll ABM campaigns automatically. Use these settings to define the "no-go" zones where your brand should never appear, regardless of the campaign.
If you’re looking to block an ad placement because of performance reasons (e.g., your campaign a high CPA or low click-through rate), we recommend using campaign-specific exclusions instead. This ensures you aren’t accidentally limiting your reach on other campaigns where that same website or app might perform well. You can find campaign-specific exclusion settings within the campaign setup process by clicking into the Advanced Options in the channel-specific settings section.
We recommend reviewing and updating your General Exclusions every 30 to 90 days to ensure they still align with your goals.
General Ad Placement Exclusions by Domain
Use the Exclude by Domain section to prevent your ads from appearing on specific websites (publishers) that don’t align with your brand, messaging, or goals.
Keep in mind that the AdRoll ABM platform only shows ads to the audience you define, wherever they are on the internet. For example, when targeting a specific audience, such as Account Targeting segments, you are electing to show ads to
people based on their account affiliation. The relevance of the website is secondary to reaching your target audience wherever they are on the internet.
To configure Exclusions by Domain for all your web campaigns, you can click here or follow the steps below:
- Click the Settings gear icon in the left navigation menu.
- Scroll down to Exclusions and click General Exclusions.
- Go to the Ad Placement Exclusion List tile and click Set Up or Edit
- Enter the domains you want to exclude in the Exclude by Domain section (one per line, up to 100,000).
- Click Save. Allow about 30 minutes to process.
We use an implicit leading wildcard for all domains you enter. For example, if you enter acme.com, we’ll exclude all subdomains that match *.acme.com. See below for examples.
| You Enter | We Exclude | We Allow |
|---|---|---|
| acme.com |
www.acme.com mail.acme.com sports.acme.com |
Any domains that don’t end in acme.com |
| sports.acme.com |
sports.acme.com tennis.sports.acme.com |
finance.acme.com www.acme.com |
General Exclusions by Mobile App
Use the Exclude by Mobile App section to block specific mobile apps that aren’t meeting your brand values or are outside your target audience’s environment. To fully block a mobile app, you must add both the iOS app ID and the Android app ID.
To configure mobile app exclusions, you can click here or follow the steps below:
- Click the Settings gear icon in the left navigation menu.
- Scroll down to Exclusions and click General Exclusions.
- Go to the Ad Placement Exclusion List tile and click Set Up or Edit
- Enter the app IDs associated with the mobile apps you do not wish to target (one per line).
Important
- Many apps are available on both platforms, and excluding only one will not block the other. To fully block a mobile app, you must add both the iOS App ID and the Android App ID.
For example, to block the mobile app Words With Friends 2:
| App Store | App ID | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Android | com.zynga.words3 | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zynga.words3 |
| Apple (iOS apps) | 1196764367 | https://apps.apple.com/us/app/words-with-friends-word-game/id1196764367 |
- Click Save.
General Exclusions by CTV App
Use the Exclude by CTV App section to prevent your ads from appearing in specific streaming apps that don’t align with your brand, messaging, or audience targeting. To fully block a CTV app, you may need to add multiple app IDs if the app runs on more than one CTV platform.
To configure CTV app exclusions, you can click here or follow the steps below:
- Click the Settings gear icon in the left navigation menu.
- Scroll down to General Exclusions and click By App.
- Scroll down to the CTV Apps section
- Enter the app IDs associated with the CTV apps you do not wish to target (one per line)
Important
- To fully block a CTV app, you must add all app IDs associated with that app across supported CTV platforms (for example, Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV). Find a list of common CTV platforms and example app IDs here.
Why ABM Performs Best Without Placement Restrictions
We prioritize account-based targeting over specific ad placements to maximize reach and performance. Using machine learning, AdRoll identifies and engages your key accounts and contacts across web, mobile, and CTV environments from B2B publishers to consumer platforms while maintaining a brand-safe experience. This ensures your ads reach decision-makers wherever they are engaging with content, rather than limiting delivery to a fixed list of websites or apps.
By focusing on people instead of placements, you can build pipeline and awareness more efficiently, using targeted budgets to reach the right audience instead of relying on inventory that may not align with your accounts.