Block Bad Placements, Protect Your Brand: Using Google Ads Account-Level Exclusions for Coupon Sites

Stop wasting spend on junk placements — and stop risky coupon traffic from hurting your affiliate reputation

Coupon and deal publishers face a unique problem in 2026: you need scale to convert, but a growing pool of low-quality placements — content scrapers, incentivized “deal farms,” and thin directories — can drain ad budgets and damage partner relationships. Google’s January 2026 rollout of account-level placement exclusions changes the game. Use it to centralize brand safety, keep affiliate traffic clean, and scale smartly.

Why this matters now (late 2025 → 2026)

Advertising is more automated than ever. Formats like Performance Max and Demand Gen now dominate campaign spend. At the same time, cookie deprecation and privacy changes shifted publishers to behavior- and placement-driven strategies — which creates more opaque inventory. That’s why Google added account-level exclusions on January 15, 2026: a single place to block bad inventory across Performance Max, Demand Gen, YouTube, and Display.

"Google Ads is adding account-level placement exclusions, letting advertisers block unwanted inventory across all campaigns from a single setting." — Search Engine Land, Jan 15, 2026

How coupon publishers get hurt by bad placements

• Affiliate partner churn: merchants reject or devalue conversions from suspicious placements or incentivized traffic.
• Low-quality conversions: clicks from content scrapers and low-intent pages cause high bounce rates and poor LTV.
• Ad policy & brand-safety risk: your ad creative or merchant offers might appear next to questionable content, triggering policy flags or merchant complaints.
• Wasted budget: automated bidding can pour spend into placements with poor viewability or invalid traffic.

The account-level exclusion advantage: what changed

Before 2026, exclusions lived at campaign or ad-group level. That fragmentation made it easy for deals accounts running many campaigns to miss a bad site. With account-level exclusions you can:

• Block once, apply everywhere — exclude a domain, app, or YouTube channel across all eligible campaigns.
• Protect automated formats — guard Performance Max and Demand Gen without disabling automation.
• Scale safer — update one list to prevent future spend on newly identified bad placements.

Step-by-step: Build an account-level placement exclusion workflow

The following process is what experienced coupon publishers and performance teams use. It balances protection with scale.

1) Audit existing placement traffic (weekly for active accounts)

• Export placement and placement performance reports from Google Ads for the last 30–90 days.
• Key metrics to segment: spend, clicks, conversions, conversion value, invalid traffic rate (IVT), viewability, bounce rate, and engagement time.
• Flag placements with high spend but low conversion value and high bounce/IVT as top candidates for exclusion.

2) Categorize problem placements

Not every poor-performing placement should be blocked. Use categories to decide action:

• Immediate block — policy violations, adult/illegal content, or confirmed fraud.
• Block & monitor — incentivized traffic farms, scrapers, or directories that generate clicks but no value.
• Whitelist testing — high-volume publishers whose quality is mixed; consider selective campaign exclusions instead of account-level block.

3) Create your master account-level exclusion list

In Google Ads (UI or API), create a centralized exclusion list and name it clearly — e.g., Deal2Grow_Coupon_Publisher_Blocklist_2026. Include:

• Exact domains (example: baddealscraper.com)
• Known subdomain patterns (use wildcard-like awareness; Google doesn’t accept regex in UI but be explicit with main domains)
• Problematic app IDs and YouTube channel IDs

4) Apply exclusions account-wide and test impact

Apply the exclusion list to the account. Then run a 7–14 day test window and compare performance against the pre-block baseline.

• Measure: CPA, ROAS, conversion quality, invalid traffic rate, and attributed revenue.
• Look for budget reallocation — automation may shift spend to other placements; verify they’re high-quality.

5) Implement an ongoing update cadence

• Weekly quick scan for accounts with >$5k/mo ad spend.
• Monthly comprehensive audit (placements + affiliate postback review + merchant feedback).
• Quarterly third-party verification using IAS/DoubleVerify or similar (especially for top-spend publishers).

Practical exclusion list templates for coupon publishers

Use these categories to seed your blocklist. We include the rationale and examples of what to look for.

Tier A — Immediate block (policy & fraud)

• Domains flagged by Google for repeated policy violations
• Sites with explicit/adult/illegal content
• Known fraud networks and traffic-exchange platforms

Tier B — High-risk coupon/affiliate scrapers

• Low-content coupon directories that mirror merchant deals without added value
• Subnets of sites that generate lots of clicks but no conversions
• Websites that scrape your own content or your affiliate partners’ pages (hurts SEO and conversion attribution)

Tier C — Incentivized and rewards networks

• Sites offering cash-for-clicks, “earn points” for visiting coupons, or similar incentivized models
• App farms that artificially inflate installs or clicks

Advanced strategies for smart blocking (2026-ready)

As automation grows, exclusion maintenance must be systematic and tech-enabled. These proven strategies work for large coupon publishers.

Use the Google Ads API to automate updates

Manually editing long blocklists isn’t scalable. Use the Google Ads API to push updates from a canonical source (Google Sheet, BigQuery table, or internal dashboard). Automate these steps:

1. Daily placement-scan job identifies placements with new poor-performing spikes.
2. Flagged placements are appended to a review queue for human verification.
3. Approved blocks are programmatically added to the account-level exclusion list.

Combine third-party signals

Tools such as Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify have updated scoring aligned to 2026 ad formats. Feed their low-quality scores into your blocklist pipeline to reduce false positives and enhance coverage.

Use attribution & postback analysis

Affiliate networks often provide postback data showing which publishers drove conversions. Cross-reference that with placement reports. If a placement has many clicks but zero postbacks, investigate.

Granular rules for Performance Max and Demand Gen

Performance Max optimizes across inventory, so a single account-level exclusion can be more impactful. Use a conservative rollout when first applying to PMax: block the worst offenders, monitor, then expand the list to avoid starving the algorithm of scale.

Monitoring & KPIs you must track

To measure impact, focus on these metrics before and after applying exclusions:

• CPR (Cost per Real Conversion) — exclude spammy conversions by aligning conversion definitions with merchant-confirmed events.
• ROAS / Revenue per Acquisition — the ultimate measure for affiliate health.
• Invalid Traffic (IVT) rate — should fall after blocking fraud sources.
• Click-to-conversion lag — check if blocked placements were causing delayed or non-attributed conversions.
• Viewability & Time-on-Site — low viewability combined with low engagement is a red flag.

Case study: hypothetical DealLab reduces wasted spend by 38%

DealLab, a mid-sized coupon network, ran a controlled test Q4 2025 → Q1 2026 using account-level exclusions. Steps they followed:

1. Exported placement reports for 90 days and flagged top 5% spend placements with conversion rate <0.1%.
2. Cross-referenced with affiliate postbacks and merchant chargebacks.
3. Created a master exclusion list and rolled it out first to Display, then to Performance Max two weeks later.

Results (30 days post rollout):

• Spend on blocked placements: -100%
• Account CTR: -12% (expected as low-quality clicks disappeared)
• Conversion rate (real conversions): +21%
• Overall CPA: -38%
• Merchant complaints: down 72%

Why it worked: DealLab invested in automation but enforced strong, standardized exclusions. They didn’t try to block everything at once — they prioritized based on merchant risk and spend impact.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

• Over-blocking: Blocking too aggressively can starve Performance Max of inventory. Avoid blanket exclusions; prioritize and iterate.
• Poor naming & versioning: Use clear naming (date-stamped) for blocklists and maintain changelogs so you can roll back mistakes.
• No human review: Relying solely on automation leads to false positives. Keep a human-in-the-loop process for every addition to the account-level list.
• Ignoring partner feedback: Merchants can flag suspicious conversions; integrate merchant feedback into your review cadence.

Practical checklist to implement this week

1. Export placement and affiliate postback reports (last 90 days).
2. Build Tier A/B/C blocklist drafts and name your account-level list clearly.
3. Create an automated pipeline to sync your canonical list with Google Ads (start with manual uploads if API access isn’t in place).
4. Apply the list to Display and YouTube, then to Performance Max and Demand Gen after 7 days of observation.
5. Monitor KPIs daily for 14 days and adjust — focus on CPA and postback-confirmed conversions.

What to expect going forward in 2026

Expect more centralization of inventory controls. As Google and other platforms push automation, centralized guardrails like account-level exclusions will become table stakes for risk-averse publishers. Additionally:

• Third-party brand-safety integrations will deepen, with real-time blocklist feeds becoming standard.
• Publisher verification and transparency tools will expand to help networks prove traffic quality to merchants.
• Advertisers will increasingly use programmatic verification signals + account-level blocks to preserve scale while protecting brand and conversions.

Actionable takeaways

• Create a single, account-level exclusion list and make it your canonical source of truth for placement blocks.
• Prioritize blocks by merchant risk and spend impact — don’t try to block everything at once.
• Automate safely: use the Google Ads API + a human review workflow to scale list maintenance.
• Monitor the right KPIs: postback-confirmed conversions, CPA, IVT, and merchant complaints are the most important for coupon publishers.
• Partner with verification vendors to improve signal quality and reduce false positives.

Final thoughts

Account-level placement exclusions are a crucial tool for coupon and deal publishers in 2026. They let you centralize brand safety, protect affiliate relationships, and keep automation from funneling spend into low-quality traffic. But the advantage only comes when exclusions are managed as part of a disciplined workflow: audit, categorize, test, automate, and monitor.

Ready to protect your affiliate reputation and scale smarter?

Start by mapping your top 100 placements this week. If you want a head start, download our 2026 Coupon Publisher Blocklist template and the automation checklist to sync with Google Ads API. Keep your campaigns scalable — and your affiliate partners happy.

Call to action: Download the Deal2Grow 2026 Exclusion Template and get weekly alerts on new risky placements. Sign up for our coupon-publisher playbook to receive tested blocklist strategies and API scripts used by mid-market publishers.

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