How to Exclude Placements in PMax:
A Google Ads Hack

Home » How to Exclude Placements in PMax: A Google Ads Hack

Google Ads’ Performance Max campaigns (also known as PMax) are one of the platform’s flagship products. They use artificial intelligence to distribute ads across all of Google’s channels: Search, YouTube, the Display Network, Gmail, Discover, Maps, and more.

However, these campaigns still operate like a black box—one that Google is slowly starting to open. As a result, certain actions that are straightforward in other campaign types can be much more difficult to implement in PMax.

THE PROBLEM WITH EXCLUDING PLACEMENTS IN PMAX

If you’re working with PMAX campaigns and want to exclude placements, you probably already know that the current options are quite limited. Google essentially offers two official paths:

a) Excluding them at the account level, as explained by Google here (which affects all your other campaigns and isn’t easy to automate),

b) Filling out this online form, attaching an Excel file with the placements you want to exclude, submitting it to Google… and crossing your fingers that it gets approved.

In other words, you get to choose between a tedious and inefficient process—or an even more tedious and less efficient one.

THE ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION: A PMAX PLACEMENT EXCLUSION “HACK”

The good news is that we’ve found a third way: a hack that lets you exclude placements only in PMAX, without affecting other campaigns, without relying on support, and with full autonomy.

Important: It appears to be a Google bug, so it could stop working at any moment.

Steps to Implement This Method

Create a placement exclusion list at the MCC level. You can see how to do it at this link.
Link that list to the child account that contains the PMAX campaigns whose placements you want to exclude (instructions in the link above).

And that’s it! All PMAX campaigns in that account will automatically start excluding those placements, without needing to assign the list to each campaign individually.

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

Note 1: Only affects PMAX campaigns

It’s important to keep in mind that, as of today, this process can only be applied to PMAX campaigns. Display, Video, or DemandGen campaigns will continue using those placements unless you also take the following steps:

Create an exclusion list at the child account level.
Manually assign it to the Display, Video, or DemandGen campaigns you want.

Note 2: MCC list limitations

Lists created at the MCC level cannot be assigned to specific campaigns, regardless of the campaign type. This is possible with lists created at the child account level for Display, Video, or DemandGen campaigns.

CONCLUSION

The truth is, none of this makes much sense: the fact that Google doesn’t allow you to assign specific campaigns to placement exclusion lists created at the MCC level and linked to a child account, or that a list created at the MCC level and linked to a child account automatically excludes placements in PMAX (and only in PMAX) without needing to assign it to any campaign. So, chances are we’ll see changes in the coming months. But for now — it is what it is!