Brand safety
Take steps to ensure that the best ads appear on your site#blockingcontrols
To give you editorial control over the ads that may appear on your site, AdSense offers several options for reviewing and blocking ads.
There are various reasons why you might not want certain ads to show on your site. You may have content or business reasons, or philosophical issues. Maybe you have a vegan food blog and you don't want to show an ad for a steakhouse. Maybe you find an ad that's a violation of Google policies and shouldn't be there.
This article helps you choose the right blocking control for your particular need.
Blocking options available to Publishers
Note: Ad blocking should be used sparingly. Displaying all ads creates the most competitive atmosphere in the ad auction, with the largest numberof ads possible competing for an impression.
Choose the right blocking control
Blocking ads can have a negative effect on your earnings, so it's important to choose the right blocking control. Use the list below to help you choose the control that matches your ad blocking requirements. We recommend that you start with the control that blocks the fewest ads first.
Block individual ads
The Ad Review Centre lets you review and take action on individual ads that have appeared on your pages. Learn more about the Ad review centre.
Report a bad ad to Google
If you find an ad that violates our policies, you can either:
- Report an ad in the Ad Review Centre
- Report an ad via the Google Ads form.
Block all ads that point to a specific advertiser
You can block ads that point to a specific advertiser.
Example
Let's say that you run WidgetUniverse.com and your biggest competitor runs WidgetGalaxy.com. Since your page content is about widgets, WidgetGalaxy ads are automatically matched to your site. To avoid showing your competitor's ads, you can add WidgetGalaxy.com to your list of blocked advertiser URLs, and avoid viewing another ad from them again.
Learn more about blocking advertiser URLs.
Block ads related to a sensitive topic
You can block ads from categories related to sensitive topics such as Religion, Politics and References to Sex and Sexuality. Sensitive category blocking is available for ads in a limited set of languages, regardless of the language of the site.
Block a general group of ads
You can block ads from general categories such as Clothing, Internet, Property and Vehicles. General category blocking is available for ads in a limited set of languages, regardless of the language of the site.
Block ads from a third-party ad network
Ads from certified Google ad networks are allowed to appear on your pages by default. You can allow and block specific third-party ad networks, or all future ad networks. Learn more about allowing and blocking ad networks.
Block certain types of ad formats or behaviours
You can block certain ad format and auction behaviour in AdSense, such as blocking user-based ads, or allowing additional ad technology vendors in your account. Learn more about ad serving settings.
Choose how you apply blocking controls across your sites
If you have multiple sites, you can choose to apply a blocking control across all your sites. However, to give you more control, you can apply some blocking controls on a site-by-site basis. This is called site-level blocking.
Site-level blocking may help you block fewer ad impressions because it lets you choose a different blocking strategy for each site that you manage. Specifically, you can customise the advertiser URL, general category and sensitive category blocking options for each of your sites.
Example
You might want to block a category of ads from appearing on a children’s site that you run, but allow those same ads to appear on a separate sports-related site that you also manage.
Important things to know about site-level blocking:
- Only applies to AdSense for content ads.
- Only blocks advertiser URLs, general categories and sensitive categories on a site-by-site basis.
- Only applies site-level blocks to one site at a time, you can’t group several sites together.
Use the site management feature to make your site available for site-level blocking.
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