Block general categories

You can block high-level groupings of ads — such as Apparel, Finance, and Health — from appearing on your network or specified inventory.

Our system classifies ads automatically, and we don't rely solely on advertiser-provided categorization. Our technology makes its best attempt to filter ads from the possible categories; however, we don't guarantee that it will block every related ad.

General category blocks apply to these transactions

• The Open Auction
• Private Auctions
• First Look

Learn more about transaction types.

Get started

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Protections  Protections
3. Click New protection  Ad content
4. Name your protection.
5. From the “Inventory type” dropdown, select the medium on which you want to control the display of ads, such as Mobile app.
6. The default is to apply the protection to all inventory. To target specific inventory:
   • Select Only protect specified inventory, click Add targeting, select an item from the dropdown, and make your targeting selections.
   • Learn more about targeting in protections.
7. Under “Blocks,” click Add next to “General categories”.
8. Select the checkboxes of the general categories whose ads you want to exclude.
   • You can also expand each top-level category to select sub-categories.
   • The "Estimated 7-day revenue impact" column shows how blocking the category affects your revenue.
9. Click Update.
10. Add more protections as needed and click Save.

Supported languages

When you block a general category, ads in that category will be blocked if they’re in any of the following languages.

• Chinese (Simplified)
• Dutch
• English
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Spanish
• Turkish