This article describes how to block ads from showing on your website by blocking URLs from specific advertisers. You can block entire domains, subdirectories, specific videos, and more.
On this page:
Note: To use this feature, you must have a linked Ad Exchange account.
You can block ads from specific advertisers' websites from appearing on your pages. This is helpful when you don't want to display particular advertisements—for example, you may want to block ads leading to competitors' sites.
You can block ads that link (or, click-through) to specific URLs. This way, you can easily block all ads that are linked to your competitor at example.com. By entering a top-level domain, such as example.com, you'll also block all ads that link to subdirectories below that domain.
To block individual ads instead of specific advertiser URLs, use the Ad review center.
Advertiser URL blocks apply to these transactions:
- Open Auctions
- Private Auctions
- First Look
Learn more about transaction types.
Guidelines for blocking URLs
| Action / component | Guideline |
|---|---|
| When entering the advertising URLs you want to block |
|
| For URL paths |
|
| For query paths |
|
| For subdomains |
|
| For apps | URLs are normalized for Google Play Store and iTunes URLs. This means you only need to add one variation of the URL to block the app from advertising on your property. For example, if itunes.apple.com/app/id12345 and itunes.apple.com/us/app/id12345 point to the same app, you only need to enter one of the URLs to block the app entirely.
Note: If you want to block an app from the Apple App Store, you need to block both URL formats. For example, to block
id12345, you need to block itunes.apple.com/app/id12345 and apps.apple.com/app/id12345. |
| For YouTube videos |
VID should be replaced with the corresponding video or channel ID. |
For URLs that combine a top-level domain with a country code top-level domain (such as google.com.br) |
Explicitly include the country code top-level domain as part of the URL. |
| For internationalized domain names |
Internationalized domain names are accepted after being converted to ASCII strings using Punycode transcription and prefixed with |
Block URLs in protections
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Click Protections, and then Protections again.
- Click New protection, and then Ad content.
- Name your protection.
- Select the inventory you wish to protect with targeting:
- Protect all inventory: Choose this option to create a global inventory protection.
- Only protect specified inventory (default setting): Click the "Add targeting preset" menu or an inventory option, and make your targeting selections.
- Under "Blocks," click Add next to "Advertiser URLs."
- In the text box, enter (or copy and paste) the display or destination URL(s) you want to block, separating new URLs with a line break.
Follow the guidelines for blocking URLs. - Click Add.
All of the advertiser URLs you enter appear on the right side of the page. To allow an advertiser URL that you’ve blocked, find it in the blocked list and clickto the right of the URL.
- Click Update.
- Add more protections as needed and click Save.
to the right of the URL.When URLs will be blocked
It can take up to 4 hours for these URLs to be blocked from your pages. Ads with these URLs can appear in the Ad review center for up to 24 hours.
