The Evolution of Video Action Campaigns and the Critical Role of Negative Signals

Video Action Campaigns represented a significant shift in YouTube advertising, bringing conversion-focused automation to video marketing. As Google transitions these campaigns to Demand Gen by Q2 2025, advertisers face a critical challenge: how to maintain campaign efficiency while scaling across Google's expanding video inventory. The solution lies in applying the same negative signal intelligence that has proven essential in search campaigns to video formats.

The stakes are substantial. With YouTube ad spend reaching $8.92 billion in Q1 2025 and advertisers managing campaigns across 2.53 billion potential users, waste accumulates quickly. Just as search campaigns lose 15-30% of budget to irrelevant clicks, video campaigns bleed budget through poor placements, misaligned audiences, and content that contradicts brand positioning. The difference? Video waste often goes undetected longer because the signals are less obvious than search query data.

Search campaigns have taught us that negative intelligence matters as much as positive targeting. You wouldn't run a search campaign without negative keywords, so why run video campaigns without equivalent exclusion strategies? This article shows you how to translate search campaign discipline into video performance optimization, protecting budget while maintaining the reach that makes video advertising powerful.

Understanding Video Action Campaign Structure and Signal Types

Video Action Campaigns were designed to drive conversions through YouTube's inventory using automated bidding and targeting. Unlike awareness-focused video campaigns, VACs optimize for specific actions: purchases, sign-ups, downloads, or other conversion events. According to Google's official Video Action Campaign documentation, the format uses machine learning to identify users most likely to convert based on intent signals across Google's ecosystem.

The performance potential is significant. Early Demand Gen adopters (the successor to VAC) have seen up to 57% CPC improvement compared to 2024 Video Action Campaigns, with some brands achieving 40% greater efficiency and campaign CTRs reaching 7.6% for conversion-focused campaigns. These results depend entirely on showing ads to the right audiences in the right contexts, which means excluding the wrong ones with equal precision.

The Three Signal Types in Video Campaigns

Video campaigns generate three distinct categories of signals that parallel search campaign data, each requiring different exclusion approaches:

• Audience Signals: User characteristics, behaviors, and interests that determine who sees your ads. In search, you exclude with negative keywords. In video, you exclude with audience exclusions and demographic filters.
• Placement Signals: Where your ads appear, including specific videos, channels, apps, and websites. In search, you exclude with negative keyword themes. In video, you exclude with placement lists and content category restrictions.
• Content Signals: Topics, themes, and subject matter associated with ad placements. In search, you analyze query intent. In video, you apply topic exclusions and brand safety controls.

These signals interact constantly. An ad might reach the right audience demographic but appear on an inappropriate channel. Or it might appear on a quality channel but reach users with no purchase intent. Effective negative signal management addresses all three dimensions simultaneously, just as comprehensive search campaign optimization combines negative keywords, geographic exclusions, and device bid adjustments.

The Transition to Demand Gen: Why Negative Signals Matter More

As Google phases out Video Action Campaigns in favor of Demand Gen, the inventory expands significantly. Demand Gen campaigns serve across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail, multiplying the potential placements where your ads appear. This expansion makes exclusion strategies even more critical. More inventory means more opportunities for waste without proper controls.

The automated nature of these campaigns amplifies both wins and losses. When targeting works, conversions come efficiently. When it misses, budgets evaporate across thousands of poor placements before you notice. Research from academic studies on YouTube advertising effectiveness shows that repetitive, irrelevant, or poorly placed advertisements create negative brand associations, meaning video waste damages more than just your budget—it erodes brand equity.

Translating Search Campaign Negative Intelligence to Video Formats

Search campaigns have refined negative keyword management into a science because the cost of irrelevance is immediately visible in query reports. Every "free," "cheap," or off-topic search term that triggers your ad represents wasted spend you can quantify and eliminate. Video campaigns need the same rigor applied to different signal types.

Lesson One: Systematic Signal Review Prevents Budget Drift

In search campaigns, you review search term reports weekly or daily, depending on spend levels. You identify patterns of irrelevance, add negative keywords, and measure the impact on efficiency. This discipline doesn't exist by default in video campaigns because the data is less centralized and harder to interpret.

Implement the same systematic review for video placements. Google Ads provides placement reports showing where your video ads appeared. Export this data weekly and analyze it with the same critical eye you apply to search terms. Look for patterns: channels with views but no conversions, app placements with high CPMs but low engagement, website placements that don't align with your brand positioning.

For agencies managing multiple client accounts, this review process consumes significant time. Just as tools like Negator.io automate search term analysis using AI and business context, you need systematic processes for video placement review. Create templates, set thresholds (e.g., any placement with 100+ impressions and zero conversions gets reviewed), and build exclusion lists proactively rather than reactively.

Lesson Two: Context-Aware Exclusions Beat Blanket Rules

The best search campaign managers don't just add every possible negative keyword. They understand context. The query "apple" means different things for a fruit distributor versus a tech retailer. Protected keywords prevent accidentally blocking valuable traffic variants.

Apply this same contextual thinking to video exclusions. A financial services advertiser might exclude "entertainment" topics broadly, but that could block financial news entertainment formats where their ideal audience congregates. A B2B software company might exclude mobile games, but what if your targeting data shows decision-makers watch game content during downtime?

Build context-aware exclusion strategies by analyzing conversion data first, then excluding based on evidence rather than assumptions. Start with brand safety absolutes (inappropriate content categories for your brand), then layer in performance-based exclusions derived from actual placement data. This mirrors how effective search campaigns combine branded negative keywords (protect trademark) with performance-based negatives (eliminate low-converting queries).

Lesson Three: Cross-Campaign Intelligence Compounds Efficiency

Sophisticated search advertisers maintain shared negative keyword lists across campaigns. When you discover that "free" queries don't convert in one campaign, you apply that learning across all relevant campaigns immediately. This compounds efficiency gains and prevents repeating the same mistakes.

Video campaigns benefit from the same cross-campaign intelligence, and you can even pull insights from different campaign types. Building smarter campaign exclusions with cross-channel data means recognizing that the search terms you exclude often indicate content themes you should exclude in video, and the placements you block in display campaigns often correlate with poor YouTube channel performance.

Create a unified exclusion strategy across campaign types. If search data shows you attract unqualified traffic around "DIY" or "free alternative" queries, exclude YouTube channels focused on DIY content or free tool comparisons. If display campaigns show poor performance on certain app categories, exclude those same app categories from video campaigns. The signals differ, but the intent patterns remain consistent.

Implementing Effective Placement Exclusion Strategies for Video Campaigns

Placement exclusions represent the most direct parallel to negative keywords in search campaigns. Just as you prevent ads from showing for specific queries, placement exclusions prevent ads from appearing on specific videos, channels, apps, and websites.

Building Your Foundation Placement Exclusion List

Start with account-level exclusion lists that apply across all video campaigns. According to Strike Social's research on video and channel exclusions, advertisers can maintain up to 65,000 placement exclusions per account, with the ability to add 20,000 in a single operation.

Your foundation list should include four categories:

• Brand Safety Exclusions: Channels and content that violate your brand guidelines regardless of performance. This includes inappropriate content, competitor channels, and topics that conflict with your brand values.
• Quality Threshold Exclusions: Low-quality content farms, clickbait channels, and sites known for inflated metrics. Free exclusion lists containing 40,000+ problematic placements are available for Performance Max campaigns and apply equally to video inventory.
• Audience Mismatch Exclusions: Content with audiences that don't match your customer profile. A B2B enterprise software company should exclude children's content, teen entertainment channels, and gaming streams targeting under-18 audiences.
• Performance-Based Exclusions: Placements that have consumed budget without delivering results. Any channel or video with significant spend but zero conversions belongs here.

Maintain this list like you maintain search campaign negative keyword lists: review monthly, add new exclusions based on placement reports, and audit quarterly to remove exclusions if targeting strategies change. The list should grow continuously as you discover new waste sources.

Campaign-Specific Exclusion Strategies

Beyond account-level exclusions, implement campaign-specific placement restrictions based on each campaign's goals and audience. A lead generation campaign targeting CFOs needs different exclusions than an ecommerce campaign targeting consumers.

For each video campaign, analyze placement reports after accumulating 5,000-10,000 impressions. Sort placements by spend and identify any that have consumed more than 2-3% of total budget without conversions. Add these to campaign-level exclusions. Then analyze placements with conversions but poor conversion rates compared to campaign average. These represent borderline cases—test excluding them and measure the impact on overall efficiency.

Set up automated rules to flag placements for review. For example, create a rule that alerts you when any single placement consumes $100 (or whatever threshold makes sense for your budget) without a conversion. This mimics the search term review process where you investigate expensive queries that don't perform.

YouTube-Specific Placement Intelligence

YouTube presents unique placement challenges that don't exist in search campaigns. Your ads can appear before, during, or after videos on an almost infinite variety of channels. Some channels have highly engaged audiences perfect for your offer. Others attract passive viewers who skip ads reflexively.

Analyze channel performance, not just individual video performance. A single video might perform poorly, but if the channel overall drives conversions, keep it. Conversely, a channel might have one viral video that attracted your targeting but otherwise produces content misaligned with your audience. Exclude the entire channel in these cases.

Consider content freshness and evergreen versus trending content. Ads on trending news videos might generate views but poor conversion rates as users are in information-gathering mode, not purchase mode. Evergreen educational content often delivers better conversion rates because viewers are actively seeking solutions to problems your product solves. Negative keyword intelligence for YouTube ads extends beyond placements to understanding the intent signals different content types generate.

Mastering Topic Exclusions and Content Category Controls

Topic exclusions in video campaigns function like negative keyword themes in search campaigns. Instead of blocking specific queries, you block entire content categories. This provides broader protection but requires careful calibration to avoid over-excluding.

The Topic Exclusion Framework

Implement topic exclusions in three tiers, from broadest to most specific:

• Tier 1 - Absolute Exclusions: Content categories that are never appropriate for your brand. This might include sensitive social issues, tragedy and conflict, adult content, and other topics defined by your brand safety guidelines. Apply these universally across all video campaigns.
• Tier 2 - Strategic Exclusions: Categories that don't align with your audience or campaign goals. A professional services firm might exclude entertainment and gaming. A luxury brand might exclude budget and frugal living content. These vary by brand and campaign objective.
• Tier 3 - Performance-Based Exclusions: Categories that testing has shown deliver poor results for your specific campaigns. You might discover that news content drives awareness but not conversions, or that educational content converts well but entertainment content doesn't. Build these exclusions from data.

Test topic exclusions systematically. Start with Tier 1 absolutes only, gather performance data across topics, then add Tier 2 strategic exclusions. Run campaigns for 30 days, analyze topic-level performance data, then implement Tier 3 performance-based exclusions. This staged approach prevents over-exclusion while building evidence-based protection.

Content Category Performance Analysis

Google provides content suitability controls with inventory types ranging from "Expanded inventory" (maximum reach) to "Limited inventory" (maximum brand safety). Most advertisers default to "Standard inventory," but this setting still allows ads on content that may not serve your performance goals.

Review content category performance quarterly. Export placement reports and categorize placements by content type (you may need to do this manually or use YouTube's category data where available). Calculate conversion rate, CPA, and ROAS by category. Then adjust your inventory type settings and specific topic exclusions based on actual performance data.

Balance reach with efficiency. Overly restrictive content settings might reduce wasted impressions by 30% but also reduce total conversion volume by 40%, resulting in worse overall campaign performance. The goal isn't zero waste—it's optimal efficiency. This mirrors search campaign philosophy where some query waste is acceptable if overall ROAS meets targets.

Audience Exclusion Strategies: Learning from Search Intent Signals

Search campaigns teach you which user intents convert and which don't. Someone searching "best free alternative to [your product]" has different intent than someone searching "[your product] enterprise pricing." Video campaigns provide similar intent signals through audience characteristics and behaviors.

Strategic Demographic Exclusions

Start with obvious demographic exclusions. If you sell B2B enterprise software, exclude the 18-24 age group unless data proves they influence decisions. If you sell retirement planning services, exclude under-35 audiences. These basic exclusions prevent waste on users who can't convert regardless of interest level.

But apply nuance based on conversion data. Your B2B product might not be purchased by 18-24 year-olds, but junior employees in that age range might research solutions they recommend to decision-makers. If your conversion funnel shows assisted conversions from younger demographics, don't exclude them. Let data override assumptions, just as search campaign optimization sometimes reveals that unexpected queries actually convert.

Behavioral and Affinity Audience Exclusions

Google's audience targeting includes affinity audiences (long-term interests) and in-market audiences (active purchase intent). Both can be excluded when they don't align with your customer profile.

Exclude affinity audiences that correlate with low conversion rates. If your data shows that users with strong affinity for "Budget Shoppers" or "Value Seekers" rarely convert to your premium product, exclude these audiences. If "Technophobes" audiences don't convert to your tech product (obviously), exclude them. This is equivalent to adding "cheap" and "simple" as negative keywords in search campaigns.

Analyze in-market audiences more carefully. These represent users actively researching products, but possibly in categories adjacent to yours. Someone in-market for "Free Business Tools" might not be a qualified lead for your premium SaaS product. Someone in-market for "Small Business Loans" might not want your accounting software. Exclude in-market categories that sound related but attract the wrong buyer profile.

Custom Audience Exclusions Based on Your Data

Your most powerful audience exclusions come from your own data. Just as you use search query data to refine negative keywords, use your CRM and analytics data to define audiences you should exclude from video campaigns.

Exclude existing customers unless you're running retention or upsell campaigns. Upload customer lists as audience exclusions to prevent wasting acquisition budget on users who already purchased. This seems obvious but is frequently overlooked in automated video campaigns with broad targeting.

Exclude audiences that resemble low-quality leads. If your CRM data shows that leads from certain industries, company sizes, or job titles never convert to customers, create similar audiences based on those characteristics and exclude them. If users who visited your pricing page but didn't convert share identifiable characteristics, create lookalike audiences and exclude them from acquisition campaigns while targeting them with specific objection-handling creative.

Pull exclusion insights from other channels. Using exclusion data to improve paid social campaigns works in reverse too—audiences that don't perform in social campaigns often underperform in video campaigns. Create unified audience exclusion lists across channels based on conversion data from all sources.

Controlling Video Inventory in Performance Max Campaigns

Performance Max campaigns present unique challenges for video inventory control because they automatically serve across Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. You don't select placements; Google's automation does. This makes exclusion strategies even more critical.

Understanding Performance Max Exclusion Capabilities

Performance Max offers more limited exclusion controls than dedicated video campaigns, but Google has expanded these capabilities significantly in 2025. According to recent updates, Performance Max now supports account-level placement exclusions that apply to video inventory, including YouTube channels, videos, apps, and websites.

These exclusions are primarily accessible through the Google Ads API and Google Ads Editor, not the web interface for all exclusion types. This creates challenges for advertisers without technical resources but enables agencies and sophisticated advertisers to apply exclusions at scale across multiple accounts.

Building a Performance Max Video Exclusion Strategy

Apply the same foundation exclusion list you use for dedicated video campaigns to your Performance Max campaigns. The 40,000+ site and app exclusion lists developed for brand safety serve both campaign types equally. Start with these comprehensive lists to establish baseline protection.

Use asset groups within Performance Max to segment targeting and indirectly control where video ads appear. Create separate asset groups for different audience segments with distinct audience signals. While you can't directly control placements, strong audience signals guide Google's automation toward appropriate inventory.

Leverage the new negative keyword capabilities in Performance Max campaigns. While these primarily affect Search inventory, they provide signals about intent that influence all inventory types. If you exclude "free" and "cheap" keywords, Google's automation learns these represent undesirable intents and reduces serving across video inventory to audiences exhibiting similar characteristics.

Monitoring Performance Max Video Performance

Performance Max provides limited placement-level reporting, but Google has improved transparency for YouTube placements specifically. Review the Insights tab in Performance Max campaigns to see top-performing placement categories and audience segments.

Export placement reports when available (this requires API access for detailed data) and analyze YouTube-specific performance. Look for patterns in the types of placements where your video assets appear. If you notice consistent appearance on channel types that don't align with your goals, add those specific channels to your account-level exclusion list.

Monitor budget distribution across networks. If Performance Max is allocating disproportionate budget to YouTube inventory with poor performance compared to other networks, this indicates a targeting or exclusion issue. Strengthen your audience signals, tighten exclusions, or consider moving video to dedicated campaigns where you have more control.

Measuring the Impact of Negative Signal Strategies

Search campaign managers measure negative keyword impact by tracking wasted spend reduction and efficiency improvements. Apply the same measurement discipline to video campaign exclusions.

Key Metrics for Exclusion Strategy Performance

Track these metrics before and after implementing exclusion strategies:

• Wasted Impressions Rate: Percentage of impressions on placements that have never driven conversions. Calculate this monthly and aim to reduce it by 20-30% through systematic exclusions.
• Placement Efficiency Score: Ratio of converting placements to total active placements. Higher scores indicate better targeting and exclusion strategies. Target 15-25% of placements driving 80%+ of conversions.
• Cost Per Acquisition Change: Your primary efficiency metric. Exclusion strategies should reduce CPA by 15-30% within 60 days while maintaining or increasing conversion volume.
• Budget Concentration: Percentage of spend going to top-performing placement categories versus spread across low-performers. Aim for 70%+ of budget on proven placement types.
• Impression-to-Conversion Path Length: How many impressions occur before conversion. Exclusions should reduce this by eliminating touchpoints that don't contribute to conversion paths.

A/B Testing Exclusion Strategies

Test major exclusion changes before applying them universally. Create duplicate campaigns with identical settings except for the exclusions you're testing. Run both versions for 30 days with equal budget, then compare performance.

Test these scenarios to optimize your exclusion strategy:

• Topic Exclusion Breadth: Campaign A with narrow topic exclusions (only absolute exclusions) versus Campaign B with broad exclusions (absolute plus strategic). Measure which delivers better CPA.
• Demographic Restrictions: Campaign A with standard demographic targeting versus Campaign B excluding bottom-performing age/gender combinations. Validate assumptions with data.
• Placement Exclusion Threshold: Campaign A excluding placements after $50 non-converting spend versus Campaign B excluding after $100. Find the optimal threshold for your budget level.

Iterate based on results. If broad exclusions reduce CPA by 25% but also reduce conversion volume by 40%, they're too restrictive. If narrow exclusions reduce CPA by only 5%, they're insufficient. Find the balance that maximizes total profitable conversions, not just efficiency metrics.

Reporting Exclusion Strategy Impact to Stakeholders

Communicate the value of negative signal strategies to clients and stakeholders using concrete metrics, just as you would report on search campaign negative keyword impact.

Build monthly reports showing:

• Prevented Waste: Estimated budget saved by excluding placements that would have continued consuming spend without conversions. Calculate this conservatively using historical spend rates on excluded placements.
• Efficiency Gains: CPA reduction and ROAS improvement compared to baseline periods before exclusion strategies were implemented.
• Exclusion List Growth: Number of new placements, topics, and audiences added to exclusion lists each month, demonstrating ongoing optimization.
• Performance Concentration: Show how budget is increasingly focused on high-performing placement types as exclusions eliminate waste.

Frame exclusion strategies as proactive optimization, not reactive damage control. Just as you don't wait until a search campaign exhausts its budget on irrelevant queries before adding negatives, you shouldn't wait until video campaigns waste massive budgets before implementing exclusions. Present exclusion strategies as essential campaign hygiene that prevents waste before it occurs.

Scaling Negative Signal Management Across Accounts

Agencies and large advertisers managing dozens or hundreds of video campaigns face a scaling challenge. Manual placement review and exclusion list maintenance doesn't scale beyond a few accounts. You need systematic processes and automation.

Building Scalable Review Processes

Create standardized workflows that work across all accounts:

• Weekly Automated Exports: Use scripts or API integrations to automatically export placement reports from all video campaigns every Monday. Consolidate these into a single spreadsheet or database for analysis.
• Threshold-Based Alerts: Set up automated alerts when any placement exceeds spend thresholds without conversions. Flag these for immediate review rather than waiting for monthly optimization cycles.
• Shared Exclusion Libraries: Maintain master exclusion lists that apply across multiple accounts. When you identify a problematic placement in one client account, add it to the master list so all accounts benefit.
• Quarterly Exclusion Audits: Review all exclusion lists quarterly to remove outdated exclusions and add new ones based on accumulated data across all accounts.

Leveraging Automation for Video Campaign Intelligence

Just as AI-powered tools have revolutionized search campaign negative keyword management, similar approaches apply to video campaign exclusions. The challenge is processing placement data at scale, understanding context, and making intelligent exclusion recommendations.

Look for or build automation that provides:

• Pattern Recognition: Identifies placement patterns across accounts that correlate with poor performance. If gaming apps consistently underperform across 20 client accounts, the system flags this category for exclusion.
• Context-Aware Analysis: Understands business context to avoid over-exclusion. A placement that doesn't convert for one business might be valuable for another, even in the same industry.
• Cross-Channel Intelligence: Connects search term data with video placement performance. If "free trial" search terms don't convert, flag YouTube channels focused on "free alternatives" for potential exclusion.
• Safe Exclusion Recommendations: Suggests exclusions with confidence scores based on data volume and statistical significance, preventing premature exclusions based on limited data.

Maintain human oversight even with automation. Review recommended exclusions before applying them, especially for large-scale changes. Automation should accelerate the analysis process and surface insights you'd miss manually, not replace strategic decision-making. This mirrors how effective search campaign management uses automated negative keyword suggestions but applies human judgment before implementation.

Agency-Specific Considerations for Multi-Account Management

Agencies face unique challenges in scaling video campaign exclusion strategies across diverse client accounts with different industries, budgets, and goals.

Segment clients into categories (B2B, B2C, ecommerce, lead gen, etc.) and develop category-specific baseline exclusion lists. While each client needs customization, starting with industry-appropriate templates saves hours of configuration time per account.

Create shared learning systems where insights from one account inform others. Negative signal strategies for visual-first campaigns like Discovery Ads often reveal patterns applicable to video campaigns. When you discover that certain app categories waste budget in Discovery campaigns for multiple clients, proactively exclude those categories from video campaigns too.

Educate clients on the value of exclusion strategies. Many clients focus only on positive targeting and view exclusions as limiting reach. Demonstrate with data how exclusions improve efficiency without reducing qualified reach. Show prevented waste metrics and efficiency gains to justify the time investment in ongoing exclusion management.

Future Trends: The Evolving Landscape of Video Campaign Exclusions

As Google consolidates campaign types and expands automation, exclusion strategies become both more important and more complex. Understanding upcoming trends helps you stay ahead of waste sources.

AI-Driven Content Categorization and Exclusions

Google's AI increasingly analyzes video content at granular levels beyond simple topic categories. Future exclusion strategies will leverage this intelligence to exclude based on content themes, sentiment, and context rather than just broad categories.

Expect more sophisticated exclusion controls that allow you to specify "exclude videos discussing [your product category] in negative or skeptical tones" rather than excluding all content about your category. This will require understanding how AI interprets content and setting exclusion parameters accordingly.

Privacy Changes and Signal Loss Mitigation

Privacy regulations and cookie deprecation reduce targeting precision, making exclusion strategies even more critical. When you can't target as precisely based on user data, excluding definitively wrong placements and audiences becomes a primary efficiency lever.

Invest in first-party data collection to inform exclusion strategies. Your CRM, analytics, and conversion data become the foundation for audience exclusions when third-party signals diminish. Upload customer lists, define high-value user characteristics, and create exclusions for characteristics that correlate with low conversion rates in your specific data.

Cross-Format Campaign Intelligence

As campaign formats blend (Performance Max serving across all inventory, Demand Gen spanning YouTube, Discover, and Gmail), exclusion strategies must work across formats simultaneously. The boundaries between search, display, and video campaigns blur, requiring unified negative signal approaches.

Build unified exclusion strategies that protect budget across all campaign types. The placement exclusions you apply to video campaigns should inform display campaign exclusions. The negative keywords you use in search campaigns should guide topic exclusions in video. Site-level exclusion strategies for display campaigns increasingly overlap with video inventory as both serve across the Google Display Network.

Conclusion: Your Action Plan for Video Campaign Negative Signal Mastery

Video Action Campaigns and their successor Demand Gen represent powerful conversion-driving formats, but their automation and reach create significant waste potential without proper exclusion strategies. The same discipline that makes search campaigns efficient—systematic negative keyword management—applies equally to video campaigns through placement exclusions, topic restrictions, and audience filtering.

Start implementing these strategies immediately:

• Audit Current Exclusions: Review all active video campaigns and document existing exclusion lists. Most campaigns have insufficient exclusions, relying too heavily on Google's automation without negative signal guidance.
• Build Foundation Lists: Create account-level exclusion lists with brand safety placements, low-quality sites, and obvious audience mismatches. Apply these across all video campaigns this week.
• Implement Systematic Review: Schedule weekly placement report reviews. Dedicate 30-60 minutes every Monday to analyzing placement data and adding new exclusions based on performance evidence.
• Test Exclusion Strategies: Create A/B tests comparing current targeting with enhanced exclusion strategies. Measure the impact over 30 days and scale what works.
• Apply Cross-Channel Learning: Review search campaign negative keywords and identify themes applicable to video content exclusions. Connect insights across campaign types for compounded efficiency gains.

Video campaigns managed with search campaign-level exclusion discipline consistently deliver 20-35% better efficiency within 60 days. The budget you prevent from flowing to irrelevant placements redirects automatically to high-performing inventory, improving both efficiency metrics and total conversion volume.

Negative signal management isn't about limiting your campaigns—it's about focusing them. Every dollar you prevent from wasting on wrong placements is a dollar that reaches the right audience at the right moment. Apply the intelligence from search campaigns to video formats, and your Video Action Campaigns and Demand Gen campaigns will perform with the same precision that makes search advertising reliably profitable.