General Exclusions: By Domain, App, and IP Address

 Exclusions may lead to poor performance

Ads follow your targeted audiences to the websites, apps and placements they visit. Excluding many placements by domain or App may affect your campaign's effectiveness. Do it wisely.

General Exclusions let you control where your ads are displayed and to whom your ads are displayed. Once you configure a General Exclusion it will be applied to all your AdRoll campaigns automatically. Additionally you can apply Campaign-specific exclusions by domain and by App under the Advanced Options of your Web Campaign Settings. General Exclusions take precedence over campaign-specific exclusions, with additional campaign-specific exclusions added on top. Learn more here.

We recommend reviewing and updating your General Exclusions every 30 to 90 days.

 

General Exclusions by Domain

You can apply a General Exclusion by Domain to blocklist specific placements (publisher or website domain) across all your campaigns. For example, don't show ads on a website that doesn't fit your brand, campaign messaging or isn't helping you sell your products or services.

Keep in mind that the AdRoll platform only shows ads to the audience you define wherever they are on the internet. For example, Third Party Audience targeting segments a group of people into an audience based on their behaviors, demographics, interests, lifestyle, business, financials, life events, location, and purchase predictors. The relevancy of the site to that overall audience may not be as important as getting your ad in front of the right people in that audience where they are on the internet.

To configure Placement Exclusions by Domain for all your web campaigns:

  • Click here to open Exclusions by Domain or follow the navigation steps below:
    •  
      • Click the Settings gear icon in the left navigation menu.

      • Scroll down to Exclusions and click By Domain.

  • Enter the domains you want to exclude with only one per line up to a maximum of 100,000.

  • If you have a large amount of domains to exclude consider uploading a .csv or .txt file.

  • Click Save. Your updates require about 30 minutes to process.

Screenshot 2025-06-12 at 6.50.06 PM.png

 

We use an implicit leading wildcard for all domains you enter. For example, if you enter acme.com, we’ll exclude all domains that match *.acme.com. See below for examples.

You Enter We Exclude We Allow

acme.com

www.acme.com

mail.acme.com

sports.acme.com

Any domains that don’t end in acme.com 

sports.acme.com

sports.acme.com

tennis.sports.acme.com

finance.acme.com

www.acme.com

www.acme.com

www.acme.com

sports.acme.com

finance.acme.com

 

General Exclusions by Mobile App

You can apply General Exclusions App to blocklist specific mobile apps where you do not want your ads to show across all your campaigns. For example, you may want to exclude apps where your brand does not fit or where you’re seeing the performance that does not meet your expectations.

To configure Mobile App exclusions for your web campaigns:

  • Click here to open Exclusions by App or follow the navigation steps below:
    •  
      • Click the Settings gear icon in the left navigation menu.

      • Scroll down to Exclusions and click By App.

  • Click the Settings gear icon on the left navigation menu.
  • Click By App under Exclusions.
  • Enter App IDs associated with the mobile apps that you do not wish to target.
  • Click Save.
Screenshot 2025-06-12 at 6.56.22 PM.png

 

 

General Exclusions by IP Address

You can use General Exclusions by IP Address to block specific IP addresses from seeing your ads across all campaigns. You can also exclude the address of your company's network to prevent your colleagues from being shown your ads and optimize your budget.

IP address exclusion only applies to your Retargeting Campaigns. Brand Awareness campaigns such as Lookalike Targeting, Contextual Targeting, and Third Party Audience Targeting, do not support IP address exclusion.

To set up general exclusions by IP address:

  • Click here to open Exclusions by IP Address or follow the navigation steps below:
    •  
      • Go to the Settings gear icon in the left navigation menu.
      • Click By IP Address under Exclusions.
  • Enter the IP addresses that you want to exclude with only one per line. 
  • Click Save.

Screenshot 2025-06-12 at 7.01.50 PM.png

While General Exclusions by IP are helpful in minimizing the number of ads that are served to coworkers there are some additional steps to take to minimize self-serving ads:

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