Google To Update Site Category Exclusion Options For Google Display Network Campaigns

Google is all set to refine the options it gives advertisers to leave categories of sites from their display network campaigns on the Google Display Network. This change will lead to elimination or re-categorization of various current site category exclusions along with addition of some new ones.

Looking at the future, it can be concluded that all existing campaigns will automatically switch over to the new settings.

Before reading further, note that the changes are related to brand safety updates that were announced in March. 

What Are These Changes?

A total of 5 primary changes will be seen. These are:

1. Roll-up: The “Military and international conflict,” “Crime, police, and emergency” and “Death and tragedy” categories will be rolled up into “Tragedy and conflict” exclusion category.

2. New: A new category for “Sensitive social issues” will be added. It will include content related to scandals and investigations, discrimination and identity relations, firearms and weapons, reproductive rights and more.

3. New: Another added new category will be “Content suitable for families.” Excluding “General audiences (DL-G),” will also exclude content suitable for families.

4. Removed: Gambling and error pages categories will be eliminated, as Google already restricts ads on such types of content.

5. Removed: Options such as social networks, forums, video-sharing pages and photo-sharing pages will be removed. Google is recommending to use “Digital content labels” like Mature audiences and Content not yet labeled, and other “Sensitive content” exclusions to stop ads from showing on user-generated and social content.

Reason Behind These changes

For all those who are curious to know Google’s strategy behind implementing these changes, the answer is quite simple. Google is doing this in response to advertisers who are pulling their ads from YouTube after the ads were found appearing next to content that’s extremist.

This update is a component of a larger update in order to simplify exclusions management and align Display and Video controls. A previous update added the ability to set exclusions at the account level and not only at the individual campaign level.

Google is also recommending advertisers to use the Digital Content and Sensitive Content Labels when it comes to achieve their “brand suitability” goals.

Last but certainly not the least, Google recommends advertisers to make adjustments to existing campaigns by the years end, ahead of the switch in 2018.

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Created on Sep 15th 2017 05:20. Viewed 683 times.

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