Blocklisting Categories and Domains
Last updated on November 30, 2020
You can blocklist publisher categories and domains at the account level to block them from consideration when bidding on inventory. These settings then apply as defaults for all of your account’s traffic sets. You can supersede these defaults when defining targeting criteria in traffic sets.
To block categories:
Click the My Account tab.
Click the Category Blocklist tab.
Click in the Category Blocklist field and select the categories that you want to block from consideration for your account. By default, OpenX Ad Exchange blocks the following categories:
- Adult (All)
- Firearms & Weapons (All)
- Gambling (All)
- Tobacco & Smoking (All)
- Not Classified
Click Save. If you want to remove a category from the list, click the X for the category and then click Save.
NOTE
These account-level category blocklist settings are the default settings for all of your account’s traffic sets. You can use category targeting to customize a category blocklist for individual traffic sets.
Blocklisting Domains
Use the My Account > Domain Blocklist subtab to specify (at the account-level) the domains to block from consideration when bidding on ad inventory. This also blocks all subdomains for the specified URLs. You can block a maximum of 10,000 domains.
Best Practices for Blocklisting Domains
There are multiple ways you can add domains to your account-level blocklist, but the syntax with which you input these values is key to determining the end result. Domains are not case-sensitive.
| Add domain method | Affects |
|---|---|
| Exact domain | Affects traffic that matches the exact domain of the URL only. Entering “ example.com”:• Affects “ http://example.com/sports/baseball/dodgers” and “http://example.com/legal/policies”.• Does not affect “ news.example.com”. |
| Prepended domain | Allows you to prepend a domain with “*.” and affects any traffic that contains the full value. A domain can only be prepended with “*.” on the left. Doing so on the right will not have the desired effect.Entering “ *.example.com":• Affects “ http://sports.example.com/baseball/dodgers” and “http://news.example.com/nyc/yankees”.• Does not affect “ http://example.com/sports/baseball/dodgers” and “http://example.com/legal/policies”. |
| Exact domain with sub-page prefix | Affects traffic with the exact domain of the URL and the specified sub-page only. Entering “ example.com/local”:• Affects “ example.com/local/losangeles” and “example.com/local/nyc”.• Does not affect “ sports.example.com/local” or “example.com/state/local”. |
| Prepended domain with sub-page prefix | Allows you to prepend a domain and sub-page combination with “*.” and affects any traffic that contains the full value. Additionally, A domain can only be prepended with “*.” on the left. Doing so on the right will not have the desired effect.Entering “ *.example.com/local”:• Affects “ news.example.com/local” and “sports.example.com/local/pasadena”.• Does not affect “ news.example.com/politics/local” or “news.example.com/local-politics”. |
| Entering a single word | Entering a word by itself like “openx”, has no valid effect. |
NOTE
To ensure that you capture any directories that precede the domain name, make sure to use both the exact domain (
example.com) and the prepended domain (*.example.com).
Blocking Domains
To block domains:
Click the My Account tab.
In the Add URLs to the Blocklist panel, type in the URLs to block for your account or paste in a list of URLs.
Click Add to add the URLs to the blocklist. A confirmation message appears at the top of the screen.
Click the X to remove any domains or strings from the list or click Remove All to remove all of the domains or strings from the list.
NOTE
These account-level domain blocklist settings are the default settings for all of your account’s traffic sets. You can use domain targeting to customize a domain blocklist for individual traffic sets. Please note that if you set any domain targeting or blocking at the traffic set level, then those traffic set settings will override any account-level domain blocking done in this section.