How to Keep Your Ads off Offensive Sites

Paid Media / July 27, 2017

Take a deep breath. With a more proactive approach to display advertising, you can take control of exactly where your ad appears on the Google Display Network. Here’s how.

Did you wake up in a cold sweat worrying that your display ads are showing up next articles and videos that in no way represent the values of your company? You’re not alone. In today’s complex display advertising market, it’s challenging to get a handle on all the sites where your ad may appear. It’s entirely possible that a campaign is running on thousands of content sites, many of which you have never seen, let alone heard of.

With the sheer size of many campaigns, It is next to impossible to screen every campaign, every placement, site by site. What’s more, new content emerges and changes every day. How can you know, with 100% confidence, that your brand is not appearing next to hateful or offensive material?

A series of recent controversies has brought this issue into the spotlight. Big brands such as IKEA, Verizon and HBO all have experienced the shock of finding their ads next to content that does not fit with their values. In response, some of the world’s biggest brands rushed to suspend their Google and/or YouTube ad campaigns, awaiting assurance that their brands won’t be damaged by similar mishaps.

Google is quickly implementing new policies and safeguards to fix the situation. The company is reviewing its advertising policy with the goal of giving advertisers more control over where their ads appear. Google is also very busy implementing safeguards that will stop all ads from appearing next to potentially offensive content.

Despite these assurances, how can you be 100% sure your ads are appearing on content sites that are appropriate for your brand and your audience? It starts with choosing the sites you appear on, and blocking the ones you don’t want. Up front it may take more time, but this process will also vastly improve the quality of your traffic. What’s not to like about that? Here’s how to do it:

Handpick your ad placements

This sounds rigorous, but it’s a lot less intensive than unselecting from a massive list of ad placements. Decide which media sites are worthy of your display ads, and put your budget there. By adding managed placements in the Google Display Network, you simply enter the names or URLs of sites where you want your ads to appear. You can also set bids for individual placements to attract more or less traffic from your handpicked sites.

Exclude ad placements

If you want to be confident that your ads will not appear on a specific site, don’t just remove it from your list of placements — exclude it. If you remove a site that is in the GDN, there is still a chance your ad could appear there — for example, via contextual targeting. To exclude a website from multiple campaigns, go to your shared library and click on campaign placement exclusions. Here’s how it’s done.

For YouTube: use a script

Search Engine Land has uncovered a script that can help you identify YouTube videos that may contain inappropriate content. Now that the AdWords Scripts Team has announced support for video campaigns, you can download a handy script that does three things: 1) pulls a report of all YouTube ad placements; 2) Analyses the videos for a high volume of likes and dislikes; 3) Delivers a list of these potentially controversial videos. You can then review this list and add any inappropriate videos as negative placements.

Time to get proactive with your ad placements

Now that this longstanding issue has reared its ugly head thanks to a lot of unhappy big spenders, rest assured that all the major ad networks are working night and day to put advertisers’ minds at rest. Soon the Internet will be a much safer place for advertisers.

In the meantime, get proactive about your ad placements… It’s a best practice that does a lot more than filter out offensive content, it also prevents your ads from being placed on junk websites built for the sole purpose of generating ad revenue. Focus on associating your brand with quality content and magical things happen: you get better traffic from real live humans, and the Internet becomes a better place. Everybody wins.