About Placement Analysis & Exclusions

Use Placement Analysis & Exclusions to review placement performance across ad platforms in Cascade and exclude underperforming placements in bulk. Open Analysis > Ad Analysis in the left menu, then select Placement Analysis from the Analysis Methods cards.

Display and video ads can appear in unexpected apps or on unexpected sites without producing results. Review performance by placement to reduce wasted ad delivery.

Supported ad platforms and actions

For TikTok Ads and Amazon Ads Sponsored Products, you can review performance by placement, but the ad platforms do not support exclusions at the placement level.

Placements that cannot be excluded are labeled Not excludable in the list. Hover over a row to see the reason. Even on ad platforms that support exclusions, the following cases are Not excludable.

• Google Ads mobile app placements, Google-owned placements (such as Discover and Gmail), video campaign placements, and the Other row that groups placements with low delivery volume.

• Google Ads Demand Gen campaign placements (because exclusions are configured at the ad account level).

• Meta Ads ad sets using Advantage+ placements (switch to Manual placements in Meta Ads Manager to enable exclusions).

• Meta Ads ad sets without individually selected placements, ad sets that would have no placements left after exclusion, and unsupported destinations such as Threads.

• Non-website destinations (such as apps) in Microsoft Ads and Yahoo! Ads (Display). You can exclude the Microsoft Ads Audience Network from the Entire network row.

• Rows where the destination cannot be identified at the ad group level.

Exclude these from each ad platform's admin.

Prerequisites

• All roles can view placements.

• Owners and Admins can exclude placements and undo exclusions. The Business plan is required.

• Each ad platform must have an active connection and ad delivery data. You cannot exclude placements on disconnected ad platforms.

Steps

1. Open Analysis > Ad Analysis, then select Placement Analysis under Analysis Methods

Select Media, Ad Campaign, and Ad group in the filters at the top to display placements. Change the date range in the report's date settings. Save the report to reopen it with the same settings next time.

2. Review placement performance

Use sorting and filters to find placements with high ad spend but poor results.

3. Select the placements to exclude

Select the checkbox on the left of each row you want to exclude. You can select multiple rows.

4. Click Exclude N Selected Placements

Click Exclude N Selected Placements at the bottom of the screen to open the Exclude placements confirmation screen.

5. Confirm exclusions

Review the details and click Exclude. Cascade sends the exclusions to each ad platform, where they are also registered as delivery exclusions in the admin. If some selected rows cannot be excluded, the message "M of the N selected placements will be excluded. The remaining R placements will not be processed because the API does not support them or their destinations could not be identified." appears.

If exclusions fail on some ad platforms, only successful rows change to Excluded. Failed rows display the reason.

6. Undo exclusions

If you exclude a placement by mistake, select the excluded placements and click Undo Exclusions for N Selected Placements. On the Restore placement confirmation screen, click Remove. The exclusions are also removed in each ad platform's admin, and the placements return to active delivery.

Exclude the entire Microsoft Audience Network

For Microsoft Ads search campaigns, Audience Network placements appear as an Entire network row. Excluding this row removes the entire Audience Network from the campaign's delivery destinations. Preparing the exclusion may take about 1 minute.

Owners and Admins undo entire-network exclusions 1 at a time. When you undo an exclusion, the screen shows whether the previous bid adjustment will be restored or, if no record exists, delivery will resume without an adjustment.

Exclude placements from AI proposals

Every 3 days, AI identifies placements with poor results or suspected click fraud and sends exclusion proposals to the Placement Optimization card in Ad Optimization. The proposal screen shows priority (high, medium, low), campaign, ad group, placement, cost, CTR, CPC, conversions, and conversion rate. Placements with clicks and costs but 0 conversions in the last 7 days are labeled Suspicious. Rows that exclude the entire Microsoft Audience Network are labeled Entire network.

Select the rows to apply and click Optimize Placements. Exclusions are applied just as they are from this screen. Check the results in the Result and Status columns and in the status shown in Placement Analysis.

Troubleshooting

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