Site Blocking
Overview
Site blocking on the Campaign Details Sites Report lets you block your campaign from appearing on sites on the Outbrain and RevContent networks.
To block sites on Outbrain and RevContent campaigns, click the arrow to open the sites open. Then click Block.
Taboola
Whitelisting & Blacklisting
While Outbrain and RevContent are the only networks that currently block sites in Maximus, you can set up blacklists or whitelists with Taboola during campaign creation. Click here to read the Add Campaign documentation. During campaign creation, the Site Rule Set field lets you add a comment which gets submitted to your Taboola representative, and they will apply the whitelist or blacklist to your campaign. Talk to your representative to make sure they know which lists you want to use and write the Site Rule Set comment appropriately.
Site Blocking within Taboola
Individual site blocking can be done directly within Taboola and these blocked sites will reflect in Maximus. We recommend comparing the Sites report in Maximus to a campaign's Publishers reporting (with 'All Results' selected from the dropdown) over the same time period to determine the sites to block. Click here for more information on site blocking within Taboola.
Gemini
Gemini sites cannot be blocked in Maximus, but to reduce unwanted traffic we recommend lowering bids on poor performing sites to reduce spend.
Publisher Group Bidding
Setting the bid modifier to the lowest amount for specific Publisher Groups can reduce the amount of traffic coming from those sites. The bid modifiers for Publisher groups can be edited in the Edit Gemini Settings drawer on the Campaign Details page on Gemini campaigns. Click here for more information on the Gemini Publisher groups.
Site Bidding
To reduce the amount of a traffic to a site on Gemini, set the site bid of the desired site to -80% of the Gemini CPC. If the Gemini CPC is $0.10, the site bid for that site will be $0.02.
CSV Imports
Gemini campaigns can also set up specific bids before a campaign has started receiving traffic. To learn more about using this method with Maximus, please reach out to our client success team via email at clientsuccess@maximusx.com.
Hide Blocked Sites
You can hide the blocked sites for the campaign by clicking on the checkbox at the top of the report. Click on this checkbox again to display all sites including blocked sites.
You can use this feature to clean up the sites you're looking at on the report to compare only those you're actively getting traffic on.
Common Uses
Site Blocking can be used to control where your campaigns are being placed, and allow you to effectively optimize by targeting who and where you run your ads. Blocking sites which have a demographic that responds poorly to the ads or offers you are running saves money and also time in trying to optimize these sites when you could be focusing on the ones that end up performing the best.
Use Site Blocking on sites with bad CVR (Conversion Rate) or that have no conversions at all if you've seen enough data to evaluate that the campaign won't work there.
You can always remove Site Blocks if you think that you're ready to try a site again, or have added new ads that may get better traction on those sites.
Outbrain also allows you to do Site Blocking through Fire & Forget®. Click here to read more about Site Block EPC.
RevContent allows you to do Widget Blocking through Fire & Forget. Click here to read more about Widget Block EPC.
