Google Ads App Exclusions: How to Stop 140+ Mobile Placements From Draining Your Budget

TL;DR: Google Ads defaults to serving your ads across 140+ mobile app categories with zero exclusions applied. For most lead gen and service business accounts, this is a reliable source of wasted spend. A community-built spreadsheet from Reddit auto-updates daily and turns the manual exclusion setup from a 45-minute slog into a 5-minute copy-paste job.

Here’s the thing about Google Ads app exclusions: Google defaults every account to show ads across mobile applications, and they charge you for every click. The person tapping your HVAC ad inside a mobile game is not calling for a quote. The person who clicks your dental offer in a kids’ puzzle app is not booking a consult.

For most of the accounts we manage, app placements are waste. Cleaning them up is one of the fastest wins in any Google Ads audit.

What App Placements Actually Are in Google Ads

App placements are impressions and clicks that happen inside mobile apps rather than on websites or search results. Google’s Display Network reaches apps across both the Play Store and App Store ecosystems, and every new campaign is eligible to show there unless you explicitly block it. That eligibility is on by default, not something you opt into.

It is not a niche issue. Any campaign that touches Display inventory is in scope. Search campaigns with Display Network expansion enabled (a default setting Google frequently recommends or pre-selects during campaign setup), Performance Max campaigns, and standard Display campaigns all reach app inventory. The spend is real, and the conversion rate on app traffic for non-app-focused campaigns is almost always lower than on search or site-based placements.

Google’s incentive here is not aligned with yours. They get paid per click regardless of whether the lead converts. According to Creekside Marketing’s account audit work across clients in $20M+ of managed spend, app placement traffic routinely appears in placement reports with meaningful spend and near-zero conversion activity. You only benefit when a click converts. That gap is why app exclusions exist, and why applying them manually is your job, not Google’s.

The 140+ App Exclusions Problem

There are over 140 app categories you can exclude in Google Ads. Manually reviewing all of them, deciding which apply, and applying exclusions is genuinely painful. Not because the concept is hard to understand. Because the interface gives you no shortcut.

You navigate to Placements, open Exclusions, and start working through a list. Each category requires its own action. For anyone managing a handful of accounts that is annoying. For anyone managing 20 or 30 accounts it is a serious time drain, and the outcome is zero campaign improvement. No creative insight, no bid optimization, no strategic learning. Just clean-up work Google could have designed to be easier and did not.

The default is that Google continues serving your ads in apps and collecting the revenue. You have to actively opt out. That asymmetry is the core problem here.

Which Google Ads Accounts Should Exclude App Placements?

A good majority of accounts would benefit from excluding app categories, but not every single account should exclude all of them. That distinction matters before you paste in a blanket exclusion list.

If your goal is phone calls, form fills, or any direct lead action, app traffic is almost always noise. The click happens accidentally or out of boredom inside a game, not out of purchase intent. Exclude it.

If you are running a campaign specifically designed to get app installs or broad brand impressions at scale, app placements serve a real function. That is the exception in most client portfolios, not the rule.

How to Exclude App Placements in Google Ads (The Manual Method)

The native exclusion process runs through Placement Exclusions at the campaign level or through an account-level Placement Exclusion List that applies across multiple campaigns.

Campaign-level exclusions:

Open the campaign in Google Ads
Click Placements in the left sidebar
Select the Exclusions tab
Click the plus icon to add exclusions
Search for and select the app categories you want to block

Account-level exclusions (better at scale):

In Google Ads, go to Tools and Settings
Under Shared Library, open “Placement exclusion lists”
Create a new list, add your app category exclusions
Apply the list to all relevant campaigns

The account-level list is the better approach for any multi-campaign setup. You build it once, apply it everywhere, and updates propagate automatically. The problem with both paths is identical: working through 140+ categories manually takes time you could spend on higher-value optimization.

That is where the spreadsheet method comes in. We cover what else to look at during a placement review, including Performance Max-specific considerations, in our Google Ads placement review guide for PMax and Display.

The Reddit Spreadsheet That Cuts This to 5 Minutes

Someone in the PPC community built a spreadsheet that contains the full app exclusion list in a format you can copy and paste directly into Google Ads. The spreadsheet auto-updates daily, so as Google rolls out new app categories, the list stays current.

The credit goes to whoever built it. Peterson found it on Reddit and has referenced it when the topic of app exclusion came up. The point is not who made it. The point is that it cuts the manual exclusion process from something that takes a serious chunk of time down to a 5-minute task: copy the list, paste it into your Placement Exclusion List, apply.

To find it, search r/PPC on Reddit for “app exclusion spreadsheet,” or search Google for “Google Ads app exclusion list Reddit.” The auto-updating feature is the differentiator from static lists that get stale as the app ecosystem grows.

Look, this is not a sophisticated campaign strategy. It is account hygiene. But hygiene done consistently across 30+ accounts is worth more than a complex test you never get to because clean-up work is consuming your available hours.

A Few Things to Know Before You Apply

Before you paste the full exclusion list into every account, here is a short checklist. Not every account has identical inventory exposure, and Performance Max handles placements differently from standard campaigns. Reviewing these four points first will save you from accidentally blocking traffic you actually wanted.

Pull your placement report first. In Google Ads, you can see which specific apps are actually receiving impressions and clicks. If you see a particular app eating spend with no conversions, that is your strongest signal that exclusions are warranted. The spreadsheet method handles the broad category sweep. Your placement report catches the specific offenders you can also add as individual exclusions.

Performance Max is more limited. Account-level placement exclusion lists do apply to PMax campaigns, but the campaign-level exclusion interface inside PMax is more restricted than standard Display or Search campaigns. After applying your account-level list, verify it is actually registered and active against your PMax campaigns.

This does not replace negative keyword review. App exclusions address where your ads show. Negative keywords address what search queries trigger them. Both matter. Exclusions without an ongoing search term review still leaves waste in the account.

Build it into your new account checklist. Every account we set up gets an exclusion pass in the first week. Not glamorous. Reliable. Quarterly review after that is usually sufficient, especially with an auto-updating list. Our full Google Ads campaign settings checklist includes app and placement exclusions as part of the standard new-account setup sequence.

FAQ

Does this apply to my Google Search campaigns? If your Search campaign has Display Network expansion enabled, yes. Google often recommends enabling this setting during campaign creation, which opens up Display and app inventory. Disabling expansion or applying app exclusions will affect that traffic. A Search campaign set to search-only with no Display expansion is largely unaffected.

Will excluding apps hurt my Performance Max results? It may reduce impression volume slightly. For lead gen and service business accounts, that trade is almost always worth it. Fewer impressions from low-intent app traffic is not a loss. Check your placement report after applying exclusions and look at what changed in the first two to three weeks.

How do I know if my account is currently spending on apps? In Google Ads, go to Placements under Content, then look at where your Display and PMax inventory is going. Filter for mobile app entries. If you see app placements with meaningful spend and low conversion volume, you have your answer.

Can I exclude specific apps instead of whole categories? Yes. You can add specific app bundle IDs to an exclusion list alongside or instead of category-level exclusions. Category exclusions are the fastest starting point. Individual app exclusions let you get precise about repeat offenders once you have placement data to work from.

How quickly do exclusions take effect? Google typically applies placement exclusions within a few hours. Full propagation across all campaigns in your account may take up to 24 hours. Pull your placement report a few days later to confirm the expected apps are no longer showing up.

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About the author: Peterson Rainey is the founder of Creekside Marketing, a performance-focused ad agency managing $20M+ in Google Ads and Meta Ads spend across service businesses, medical practices, and ecommerce brands.