Microsoft Ads PMax Now Excludes Audience Placements (2026)
Microsoft Advertising rolled out Excluded Content Terms for Performance Max campaigns on August 6, 2026, letting advertisers block Audience ads from appearing next to up to 1,000 unwanted page titles at the account or campaign level. Here's how the feature works and why it matters for brand safety.
Key Takeaways
- On August 6, 2026, Hana Kobzová of PPC News Feed flagged a new setting appearing in Microsoft Advertising accounts: “Excluded…
- The feature matches your exclusion terms against the page titles of potential Audience network placements. If a page title…
- Google PMax offers content suitability exclusions at the account level — you can block sensitive content categories and…
Microsoft Ads Now Lets You Exclude Audience Ads Placements Within PMax Campaigns
Microsoft Advertising rolled out Excluded Content Terms for Performance Max campaigns on August 6, 2026 — a new brand safety control that lets advertisers block Audience ads from appearing next to up to 1,000 unwanted page titles, added at the account or campaign level.
The short version
Microsoft Advertising now lets you prevent your Performance Max campaigns from showing Audience ads alongside specific page titles you don’t want your brand associated with. The new “Excluded content terms” setting accepts up to 1,000 keywords and can be configured at either the account level (affecting all campaigns) or the campaign level. Any term added at the campaign level is automatically applied across all campaigns in your account to save setup time. This feature gives advertisers finer-grained control than Google PMax currently offers over Audience network placement adjacency.
Key facts
- Feature rolled out August 6, 2026, first spotted by Hana Kobzová of PPC News Feed
- Up to 1,000 excluded terms — matched against page titles only, not body content or URLs
- Set at account or campaign level; campaign-level terms auto-apply account-wide
- Part of a three-layer content suitability system alongside website exclusions and content categories
- Microsoft also lets you exclude ages and genders in PMax at the asset group level
What happened
On August 6, 2026, Hana Kobzová of PPC News Feed flagged a new setting appearing in Microsoft Advertising accounts: “Excluded content terms” within the Audience Ads section of Performance Max campaigns. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable confirmed the rollout later that day.
“This feature allows users to prevent ads from displaying alongside specific page titles by adding unwanted terms at either the account or campaign level,” Kobzová explained in her post on X.
The feature slots into Microsoft’s existing three-part content suitability framework, detailed in Microsoft’s official help documentation: website control lists (domain-level blocking), content exclusions (sensitive category blocking powered by Integral Ad Science), and now excluded content terms (page-title-level keyword blocking).
How do excluded content terms actually work?
The feature matches your exclusion terms against the page titles of potential Audience network placements. If a page title contains a term you’ve blocked — for example, a brand you compete with, a controversial news topic, or a content category Microsoft’s pre-built categories don’t cover — your ad won’t appear there.
This is important because Audience ads run across Microsoft’s syndicated partner network, which includes MSN, Outlook, Edge, and third-party publisher sites. Without exclusion controls, your PMax campaigns could serve display-style Audience ads alongside page content that doesn’t align with your brand, even if the placement technically passes Microsoft’s automated IAS brand safety checks.
As Microsoft’s help docs note: “Excluded content terms block your ads from showing next to unwanted terms (i.e., page titles).” The key word is page titles — the system does not scan the full page body or URL, so your exclusion list should focus on terms likely to appear in headlines and article titles.
The 1,000-term limit is generous — far more than most advertisers will need for day-to-day brand safety. For context, that’s enough to cover every major competitor brand, every sensitive topic relevant to your industry, and common negative-headline keywords, plus room for seasonal or campaign-specific additions.
How does this compare to Google Performance Max?
Google PMax offers content suitability exclusions at the account level — you can block sensitive content categories and exclude specific placements after reviewing where your ads appeared. But Google does not currently offer keyword-based page-title exclusion for PMax Audience network placements the way Microsoft now does.
This gap matters if you’re running campaigns on both platforms. On Google PMax, you might discover an undesirable placement only after your ad has already appeared there. Microsoft’s excluded content terms let you preemptively block entire categories of page titles before any ad serves — a more proactive approach to brand safety.
Microsoft’s PMax platform has been steadily adding controls that Google’s equivalent lacks. The platform already supports age and gender exclusions at the asset group level within PMax, another feature Google PMax doesn’t offer. For advertisers managing campaigns across both ecosystems, the divergence in control granularity is worth tracking. Our Performance Max Strategy 2026 guide covers the broader PMax landscape on both platforms.
If you’re comparing the two platforms more broadly, see our Google Ads vs Microsoft Ads comparison for a full breakdown of where each platform excels.
What this means (our take)
This is a small but genuinely useful addition that addresses a real advertiser pain point: the lack of placement-level control in automated campaign types. PMax campaigns are designed to run across all available inventory with minimal manual intervention, but that hands-off approach creates brand safety anxiety — especially for B2B advertisers, regulated industries, and brands with strict PR guidelines.
The excluded content terms feature doesn’t turn PMax back into a manually managed campaign, but it does give you a safety valve. Think of it like a blocklist for your brand’s adjacency risk: you can’t pick exactly where your ads appear, but you can draw firm lines around where they definitely won’t.
For agencies managing multiple clients, the account-level application is the real value. Set your exclusion terms once, and every client campaign in that account inherits them automatically. For single-brand advertisers, the campaign-level option lets you create different exclusion profiles for different product lines or seasonal pushes without duplicating work.
What to do now
- Audit your brand safety gaps. List the page titles, topics, and competitor brands you’d never want your ads next to. Don’t rely on IAS auto-blocking alone — those categories are broad and may miss niche risks relevant to your industry.
- Set your excluded content terms at the account level first. Start with 50-100 terms covering your highest-risk adjacency scenarios, then expand as you review placement reports over the first month. The 1,000-term cap means you can be comprehensive without hitting limits.
- Layer this with existing controls. Use website exclusion lists for known problematic domains, content exclusions for broad sensitive categories (crime, politics, etc.), and excluded content terms for the specific page-title keywords the other two layers miss.
- Monitor placement reports weekly. Microsoft PMax placement data is available in the Microsoft Advertising reporting interface. Review what’s actually being blocked versus what’s slipping through, and refine your exclusion terms accordingly.
FAQ
What are Microsoft Advertising Excluded Content Terms?
Excluded Content Terms are keywords or phrases you add to block your Performance Max ads from appearing alongside specific page titles in Audience network placements. You can add up to 1,000 terms at the account or campaign level. Any term you add to a campaign is automatically applied to all campaigns in your account.
How do I exclude Audience ads placements from Microsoft Performance Max?
Navigate to your Microsoft Advertising account settings, find the “Excluded content terms” option under Audience Ads, and add the page title keywords you want to block — for example, controversial news topics or competitor brand names. Terms can be added at either the account level (affects all campaigns) or campaign level. The feature was rolled out on August 6, 2026.
Does Microsoft Performance Max have the same brand safety controls as Google PMax?
Microsoft PMax now has stronger brand safety controls than Google PMax in one key area: excluded content terms for Audience placements. Google PMax offers content suitability settings at the account level but does not allow keyword-level exclusion of specific page titles within Audience network placements. Microsoft also provides content exclusions for sensitive categories like crime, politics, and natural disasters via its IAS partnership.
What content categories can I exclude from Microsoft Audience Ads?
Beyond the new Excluded Content Terms feature, Microsoft Advertising offers content exclusions for seven sensitive categories: Crime, Infectious Diseases & Outbreaks, Kids’ Content, Natural Disasters, Politics, Protests & Demonstrations, and Sensitive Social Issues. These are powered by Integral Ad Science (IAS) and aligned with the GARM framework.
How many excluded content terms can I add to Microsoft PMax?
You can add up to 1,000 excluded content terms per account. Terms added at the campaign level are automatically applied to all campaigns in your account to save time. Each term is matched against the page title of potential Audience network placements, not against the page body content or URL.
Sources
- Search Engine Roundtable — Microsoft Advertising Exclude Audience Ads Placements Within PMax Campaigns
- Microsoft Advertising Help — About content suitability
- PPC Land — Microsoft lets advertisers block ads next to 1,000 page titles (confirmed via Google News RSS, August 6, 2026)
- PPC News Feed (Hana Kobzová, original discovery)
