Summary:
Exclusions in Performance Max are essential to avoid wasting budget and improve campaign profitability.
By excluding certain brands, you limit cannibalization (particularly on your own brand) and regain control over acquisition.
Placement exclusions let you avoid serving ads on low-performing websites, apps, or videos, so you can focus your budget on the most profitable channels.
Finally, audience exclusions help refine your targeting, for example by preventing prospecting campaigns from retargeting existing customers. When used correctly and reviewed regularly, these exclusions optimize performance while letting the algorithm work efficiently.
Brand Exclusions in Performance Max Campaigns
Definition and importance of brand exclusions
Brand exclusions prevent your ads from showing on queries containing specific brand names, whether those of your competitors or even your own brand.
This strategy applies to the Shopping inventory and Search Network of your Performance Max campaigns.
It helps protect your budget by avoiding high cost-per-click on irrelevant terms, while preserving audience signals. This supports better optimization toward your goals, such as maximizing conversions or ROAS, which is particularly important when machine learning tends to favor these queries.
How to set up brand exclusions?
For a new campaign, go to "Campaign Settings", click "More settings", then select "Brand exclusions". You can choose an existing brand list or create a new one by clicking "+ New brand list".
If needed, check the option "Allow Shopping ads for searches mentioning excluded brands".
For an existing campaign, go to "Additional settings", click "Brand exclusions", and apply the desired brand list. This is a straightforward process, accessible from the left navigation by clicking the campaigns icon.
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Practical tips for optimizing brand exclusions
Create a comprehensive brand list that includes variations of your own brand as well as those of your competitors. This will allow you to segment acquisition through Performance Max while protecting your branded terms with a dedicated Search campaign.
This approach prevents the algorithm from cannibalizing your performance.
Regularly analyze search data via insights reports to refine your list of terms to exclude. Test the impact of these exclusions on your campaign types to balance visibility and budget efficiency, without disrupting smart bidding strategies.
Managing Placements in Performance Max
Understanding placement options in Performance Max
In Performance Max, placements include websites, mobile apps, YouTube videos, and more.
This data is visible through the "Performance Max Placement" report, which details impressions by type: webpage, mobile app, or YouTube video. To access this report, click the "Campaigns" icon, then go to "Insights and reports" > "When and where ads were shown". You can sort data by cost to identify ads served on low-performing placements.
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Steps to exclude specific placements
To exclude placements, go to "Tools" > "Content suitability" > "Advanced settings" > "Excluded placements".
Here, you can block websites, apps, app categories, YouTube channels, or specific videos identified in the placements report. These exclusions can be applied at the account level, which affects all Performance Max campaigns.
You can also use the Google Ads API to manage these exclusions in an automated and scalable way, bypassing the campaign-level limitations that are not supported in Performance Max.
Maximizing display relevance through placement exclusions
By targeting high-potential placements for your Performance Max campaigns through these exclusions, you redirect your budget toward high-converting areas. This improves the performance of your Google Ads without the risk of over-optimization.
Machine learning uses your audience signals to serve relevant ads. Download the report into a spreadsheet to analyze and prioritize exclusions based on impressions and results. This will allow you to optimize ad delivery across the Google network and maximize their effectiveness.
Mastering Audiences and Audience Exclusions in Performance Max
Why and when to exclude certain audiences?
Excluding audiences in Performance Max (PMax) in Google Ads is essential to maintaining the efficiency of your conversion funnel.
For example, it prevents your prospecting campaigns from targeting existing customers or recent visitors, which could undermine your remarketing efforts.
Use this feature when your data shows a mix of known and unknown traffic that skews your growth metrics, or to direct machine learning algorithms toward better-performing segments and away from those that convert poorly.
Setting up audience exclusions for greater effectiveness
To configure audience exclusions, go to your campaign settings. In the "Data exclusions" section, upload your Customer Match lists or site visitor segments, then apply them to prevent these audiences from being targeted at the campaign level.
In the interface, click Audiences, keywords and content > Audiences > Exclusions module. Select "Campaign" from the dropdown menu, check the segments to exclude (including CRM lists), and save your changes. This method provides precise control without affecting your other campaigns.
Best practices for using audience exclusions
Before excluding audiences, analyze segment performance using available reports.
Start by excluding conservative lists, such as recent customers, to ensure clean targeting in your prospecting campaigns. Then evaluate the impact on your ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) so you can progressively optimize based on reliable data.
Combine these exclusions with demographic, interest, or behavioral criteria to further refine your campaigns. Make sure, however, not to over-restrict reach, in order to keep performance aligned with your key objectives.
Conclusion
Mastering exclusions in Performance Max, whether for brands, placements, or audiences, turns your Google Ads campaigns into highly targeted conversion machines.
By combining careful exclusion management with quality assets and reliable data, you optimize every dollar invested while letting Google's machine learning improve your performance.
Don't waste another minute: audit your Performance Max campaigns today, identify the segments to exclude, refine your placements, and watch your conversions take off. Your data and your budget will thank you!
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FAQ
How do you exclude brands (competitors, partners, or your own) in a Performance Max campaign?
In Google Ads, go to Settings > Additional settings > Brand exclusions. Create or select a brand list (own brand, competitors, partners) to exclude, in order to prevent ads from showing on Search and Shopping in Performance Max. Don't forget to save your changes.
How do you configure account-level placement exclusions for Performance Max?
To configure account-level placement exclusions in Performance Max, follow these steps:
Go to Tools and settings > Content > Exclusions. Click Edit, then add sites, apps, or videos using the Browse or Add options. These exclusions will apply across your entire account.
What are the best practices for excluding audiences in Performance Max?
To exclude audiences in Performance Max, here are some best practices:
- Block unprofitable placements.
- Avoid sensitive sites.
- Exclude age groups or interests that don't match your target audience.
- Filter out brand or irrelevant queries.
- Use CRM lists to exclude your existing customers.
These actions can be performed through campaign settings > Exclusions. This will help you optimize your budget and reduce waste.
Should you always exclude your own brand from Performance Max campaigns, and why?
No, it's not necessary to systematically exclude your own brand from Performance Max campaigns. This decision depends on your specific context. Analyze your conversion data, your goals (brand awareness, lead generation, conversions), and your budget.
Keep in mind that excluding your brand may reduce audience signals and hurt future performance, especially if your offline conversion data is incomplete.
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