Sensitive categories in Display & Video 360 brand safety targeting

The sensitive content categories below are available for display, video, and audio line items. Learn more about the content category settings for YouTube & partners line items.

Display & Video 360 brand safety classifies websites into the following sensitive categories:

  • Sexual: Sexual content including text, images, or videos.
  • Derogatory: Content that may be construed as biased against individuals, groups, or organizations based on criteria such as race, religion, disability, sex, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or political affiliation. May also indicate discussion of such content, for instance, in an academic or journalistic context.
  • Downloads & sharing: Content related to audio, video, or software downloads.
  • Weapons: (Now merged with sensitive social issues category.) Contains content related to personal weapons, including knives, guns, small firearms, and ammunition.
  • Gambling: Contains content related to betting or wagering in a real-world or online setting.
  • Violence: Content which may be considered graphically violent, gory, gruesome, or shocking, such as street fighting videos, accident photos, descriptions of torture, etc.
  • Suggestive: Adult content, as well as suggestive content that's not explicitly sexual content. This category includes all pages categorized as adult.
  • Profanity: Prominent use of words considered indecent, such as curse words and sexual slang. Pages with only very occasional usage, such as news sites that might include such words in a quotation, are not included.
  • Alcohol: Contains content related to alcoholic beverages, alcohol brands, recipes, etc.
  • Drugs: Contains content related to the recreational use of legal or illegal drugs, as well as to drug paraphernalia or cultivation.
  • Tobacco: Contains content related to tobacco and tobacco accessories, including lighters, humidors, ashtrays, etc.
  • Politics: Political news and media, including discussions of social, governmental, and public policy.
  • Religion: Content related to religious thought or beliefs.
  • Tragedy: Content related to death, disasters, accidents, war, etc.
  • Transportation accidents: Content related to motor vehicle, aviation or other transportation accidents.
  • Shocking: Content which may be considered shocking or disturbing, such as violent news stories, stunts, or toilet humor.
  • Sensitive social issues: Issues that evoke strong, opposing views and spark debate. These include issues that are controversial in most countries and markets (such as abortion), as well as those that are controversial in specific countries and markets (such as immigration reform in the United States).

Sometimes impressions are served near unsafe content despite pre-bid blocking. This can happen if Display & Video 360 receives inaccurate URLs, the site is in an unsupported language, or if site content is changed between the time inventory is bid on, and when ads are served.

Language limitations

Brand safety categories (in Display & Video 360) and content classifiers (in Campaign Manager 360) are available in most languages, but if you are unsure about a specific category in a given locale you may want to contact your support representative. 

Other limitations

  • Recent events and news may take several days to be blockable using sensitive category targeting.

Keyword and category targeting is based on a page’s content. Pages are frequently crawled and reclassified to reflect any content changes using technology that tracks dynamicity and traffic, ensuring targeting matches content with high confidence. Highest performance is expected on high-impression inventory with a clear set of themes or topics that are consistent over time. 

Last reviewed: 05/2024

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