I’m going to go over a scenario I run into often. I wish I could see your face when reading this to know we’re in agreement.

When I launch new video campaigns or ad groups in Google Ads, I like to check the placements every day for at least a week to see where my ads are initially shown. So many times, these are the placement results I see…

When actually reviewing the top-spending placements, I often see right off the bat they’re all kids channels. Yeah, this isn’t what we want to show our clients or bosses, and most likely the marketer isn’t doing anything wrong. I’m not here to parent shame anyone, but it’s incredibly common for parents to give their kids their phone or tablet to distract them so they can finally get some work done around the house. (Look, I’ve done it so I’m not scolding anyone). So the smart PPC marketer could technically be going after the right user, but that user has given their device to someone else.

I’m sick of this happening. So in order to try (really need to stress the word try here) to limit our ads showing up on these channels, I started creating a list of channel placements that I saw consistently in our client’s placement reports. I also took a proactive approach and searched on YouTube myself. I looked up terms like “kids, childrens, toys, unboxing, kids games, etc.” I then filtered by just channels and then sorted the channels with the most video views. I now have a list of more than 1,400 channels we can add as exclusions proactively.

Just Give Us the List Already!

Okay, here it is. I’d love this list to be available to anyone in the PPC community. If you have other channels that are wasting a lot of spend that I don’t have on this list, please let us know in the comments below so we can add them to the mix.

How to Add YouTube Channels as Placement Exclusions

First, select the campaign or ad group you’d like to apply the exclusions. Then click on the Placements report. When you are in the Placements report in Google Ads, click on the Exclusions tab at the top of the page. Then click on the blue pencil icon to edit your exclusions.

Double check to make sure you have the correct Account, Campaign, or Ad group exclusion option selected. Then click on “Enter multiple campaigns.”

Now you can copy and paste the list we just shared on Google Drive into Google Ads. Then remember to add the placements and also save the exclusion list.

I’ll be the first to admit this list is small compared to all of the kids channels that are out there, but many of these channels have millions of views and even millions of subscribers. (Yes, the Baby Shark channel is on this list). Keep sending your suggestions and let’s help our fellow PPC colleagues save their clients money! We can call this our holiday gift to our readers!