Automatic placements: Definition

A term used in Google Ads reporting to reflect the webpages, videos, and apps on the Display Network where your ads show automatically based on the targeting you've selected. While you can individually target placements like webpages, videos, and apps in your ads, automatic placements are the result of placing your ad based on your other targeting methods, like keywords or topics.

Note: While Smart campaign ads serve on the Display Network, the details of where these ads are shown aren’t surfaced in the predefined report “Automatic placements (group)”.

Here's how automatic placements work:

  • If you use a campaign type that only runs on the Display Network and a targeting method other than targeted placements in those campaigns, then your ads will have the opportunity to show on Display Network websites automatically. These appearances will be reflected as automatic placements on the statistics table on your “Placements” page in Google Ads.
  • If you don't want your ads to appear in automatic placements, you can exclusively use placement targeting. Add placements to your ad group so your ads are eligible to show only on the websites you choose.

Example

If you’re using keywords for targeting in your ad group, we'll try to match your ads to relevant placements based on your keyword list, among other factors. For example, if you have an ad group with keywords related to men’s shoes, your ads in that ad group could show on web pages about shoes. Those websites would appear as automatic placements in the statistics table on your “Placements” page in Google Ads.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
true
Achieve your advertising goals today!

Attend our Performance Max Masterclass, a livestream workshop session bringing together industry and Google ads PMax experts.

Register now

Search
Clear search
Close search
Main menu
6550714617585073343
true
Search Help Center
true
true
true
true
true
73067
false
false
false