Blog
Brand safety, MFA sites, GDN placement strategy — from people who work in it.
September 20, 2026
Placement exclusions not working? A checklist that finds the cause
You excluded the site and it appeared again. Usually it is one of six things: the identifier, the www, where the exclusion lives, which campaign type it covers, when the impression happened, or a report that was never meant to be exhaustive.
September 20, 2026
How to build a Google Display inclusion list, with a worksheet you can copy
An inclusion list says where your ads may run, instead of chasing the places they should not. Where Google still supports it, how to choose candidate sites, and a worksheet for recording the decisions.
September 19, 2026
Demand Gen placements: where your ads run, and what changes when Display moves in
Google is folding standalone Display campaigns into Demand Gen. Where Demand Gen ads can run, how to see the placements, why exclusions now live at account level, and what to export before your Display campaigns migrate.
September 19, 2026
Performance Max placements: how to see where your ads ran, and exclude the bad ones
Performance Max does show you where your ads ran, but only as impressions, and Google itself says not to judge performance from it. Where to find the placement report, what it can and cannot tell you, and how to exclude placements and mobile apps in 2026.
September 11, 2026
Is there a Quality Score for Display and Performance Max?
Quality Score only exists for Search keywords. Display and PMAX have no score, so here is what decides relevance there and how to tell when it is failing.
September 10, 2026
What 14,290 placements actually look like: anatomy of an unaudited display account
A real Google Display placement report, pulled apart: 14,290 placements, €9,905 of spend, and a clearest warning sign nobody expects.
September 5, 2026
YouTube exclusion lists in Google Ads: what actually works, and what quietly does nothing
YouTube exclusions are a separate system from Display placement exclusions. Confusing the two is why so many advertisers think their list is working when it is not.
September 5, 2026
YouTube brand safety and display brand safety are not the same problem
Video curation platforms cover YouTube, Meta, TikTok and CTV. Display banner inventory is a structurally different problem, and the tooling does not transfer.
August 2, 2026
Brand suitability for brands and advertisers: the line most teams never draw
Brand safety asks whether a placement is dangerous. Brand suitability asks whether it is right for you, and that answer is different for a children's toy retailer and a defense contractor. Here is how to define your own line, write it down, and turn it into an exclusion list.
August 2, 2026
Click fraud: the silent drain on digital marketing
Click fraud rarely announces itself. It shows up as a campaign that looks fine on every dashboard and converts like nothing. Here is how it works, why display is the softest target, and what you can actually do about it inside Google Ads.
May 25, 2026
How to Use AI to Improve Your Ads: 3 Practical Steps
How to use AI to improve display advertising results: analyze campaign data with an LLM, generate more creative variations, and remove low-quality placements before they waste your budget.
April 23, 2026
Fewer visits, more revenue: what happened when we cleaned a major European brand's GDN placement list
We ran two concurrent display campaigns for a large European transportation brand, one on a curated placement list and one without. The cleaned campaign got 52% fewer visits. It also generated 7x more revenue per visit. Here's what we removed and why we think it worked.
October 25, 2024
Ad Clutter And The Fight For Awareness
When every website is plastered with banners and autoplay video, the question is no longer whether your ad ran, but whether anyone actually saw it.
August 17, 2024
What Are Low-Quality Display Websites and How Do They Affect Your Campaign?
MFA sites, AI-generated junk and fake news clones. The categories of bad placements, and what each one costs you.
July 25, 2024
Ad relevance: what it means, how Google scores it, and how to improve it
Ad relevance is how closely your ad matches what the person is looking for. Google scores it in Search, and it decides what you pay. Here is how it works.
July 2, 2024
How Display Gate Guard Finds the Bad Apples in Your Display Ads
Eight dimensions we analyze to identify problematic placements, from brand safety through to ad density.
October 31, 2023
The Rise of AI-Driven Fraudulent Websites: An Uninvited Digital Clutter
AI lowered the cost of creating fake web content to nearly zero. The MFA problem is getting worse, not better.
October 9, 2023
Post-Cookie Era: Approaches to Programmatic Display Marketing without 3rd Party Data
Third-party cookies are going away. Here's what actually works to replace behavioral targeting in display campaigns.
October 2, 2023
Contextual Targeting: Navigating the Cookieless Future with Precision
Contextual targeting puts ads next to relevant content instead of following users around. Here's why it's the right approach for the privacy-conscious era.
September 26, 2023
The Pointless Side of the Web: Made-for-Advertising Websites
MFA websites exist to collect ad impressions, not to inform readers. Here's how they work and what they cost advertisers.