Excluding all app categories from your GDN (Google Display Network) campaigns can save you a significant part of your budget, especially if you’re advertising a website. It may also explain why GDN feels like it burns through your budget without results. Follow Lucid Gen’s guide below and start saving today.
What you should know about app placements on GDN
How many application categories are there on GDN?
When Lucid Gen wrote this guide (2020), there were 141 GDN app categories: 84 from the Apple App Store, 56 from Google Play and 1 for Windows Phone apps. The number changes along with the app stores, so it may be different today.
When should you exclude all GDN app categories?
When your ads send people to a regular website, you should exclude app categories, because app placements are only really suitable for app install ads.
What do you gain by excluding GDN app categories?
The first benefit is saving budget. The second is reaching the right audience, because if you advertise a website to people who are busy playing mobile games, where would the conversions come from?
How many ways are there to exclude app categories from GDN campaigns, and which should you choose?
There are 2 ways. Option 1 is to do it directly in the Google Ads web interface, which suits you if you have only a few campaigns and accounts. Option 2 is to use the Google Ads Editor software, which suits you if you manage many campaigns and accounts.
Update (10/2026): The steps and screenshots below show the Google Ads interface from 2020, which has changed quite a lot since then. According to the Google Ads Help Center, exclusions for Display campaigns are now under Campaigns > Audiences, keywords, and content > Content > Exclusions. The old trick of excluding the adsenseformobileapps.com domain no longer works. Google’s official documentation also no longer explains how to exclude all app categories, so check whether the app category option is still available in your account before following the steps.
The method Google still documents officially is excluding individual apps under Placements: for iPhone apps, enter mobileapp::1- followed by the app’s App Store ID; for Android apps, enter mobileapp::2- followed by the app’s package name on Google Play. It’s also worth opening the report of where your ads showed after a few days, filtering out the apps that spend a lot without converting, and excluding them. It takes more effort, but it doesn’t depend on whether Google keeps the category exclusion feature.
Exclude all GDN app categories
Follow these steps to exclude all app categories from your GDN campaign.
Step 1: Sign in to your Google Ads account, select your GDN campaign and click through the following.
Your GDN campaign > Placements > Exclusions > Editing > Exclude placements.
Step 2: Choose whether to exclude from the Campaign or the Account (to apply to all campaigns), then click App categories (141).
Step 3: Expand the categories, tick each sub-category until all 141 are selected, then click Save.
That’s it, you’ve excluded all 141 app categories from your Display campaign.
If you find this method too time-consuming because you have to click through 141 app categories, try the method below instead. One selection and you’re done.
Exclude all GDN apps with Google Ads Editor
Download Google Ads Editor and install it on your computer. Then open it and follow the steps below to turn off all apps in your Display campaign.
Step 1: The first time you open Google Ads Editor, you need to add your Google Ads accounts. Click the Add button.
Step 2: Click the Open browser to sign in button. Make sure your browser is already signed in to the Gmail account that owns that Google Ads account.
Step 3: When the web page opens, select the Gmail account of the Google Ads account you want to add to Google Ads Editor.
Step 4: Click the Allow button.
Step 5: Copy the code, then go back to Google Ads Editor to paste it.
Step 6: Paste the sign-in code and click the OK button.
Step 7: If you use a Google Ads MCC (manager account), select the client account whose Display campaigns you want to exclude apps from, then click OK.
Step 8: Leave all campaigns selected and click OK.
That’s it, the Google Ads account and all its campaigns have been added to Google Ads Editor. Now just wait a moment for this window to finish loading.
Step 9: Select the Display campaign you want to exclude all apps from, then click through the following.
Your GDN campaign > Keywords and targeting > Mobile App Category, Negative > Plus > Campaign-level Negative Mobile App Category.
Step 10: Select All Apps and click OK.
Step 11: Click Post in the upper right corner, then click Post again in the small window.
That’s it, you’ve excluded all apps from your Display campaign. You can press Ctrl C to copy the exclusion and paste it into your other Display campaigns to save time.
Once your campaign is fully set up, you can copy the Google Ads campaign and just swap out the ads to save time.
Conclusion
After excluding all apps from your GDN Display campaign, keep an eye on whether your spend drops noticeably. You can also check out the other Google Ads tutorials on Lucid Gen. If you have any questions, leave a comment below. ^_^
