If you’re running Google Ads, you might be spending money on placements that aren’t just wasting your budget—they could also be damaging your brand’s reputation. 

Many advertisers avoid running Display campaigns because of concerns over click fraud, accidental clicks, and low-quality sites. But the issue runs much deeper. Performance Max (PMax) and remarketing campaigns use these same Display placements, meaning your brand could be showing up on irrelevant, low quality, or even harmful websites without you realising it. In this article, we explore how these placements could be damaging your brand’s reputation and budget, and how you can take control to ensure your ads appear in the right places.

Why this is a bigger problem than wasted budget 

For years, advertisers have worried about how the Google Display Network (GDN) drains their budget by placing ads on questionable sites. But the true danger often goes unnoticed: the risk to your brand’s reputation. When your ads appear on low-quality or controversial websites, it’s not just about poor performance; it’s about linking your brand to content that doesn’t reflect your values.

• Your brand could appear on misleading, low-quality, or controversial websites
• You risk associating your brand with content that doesn’t align with your values.  
• Your customers might lose trust if they see your ads in the wrong context.

The worst part? Advertisers often don’t even know where their ads are being placed. Google limits transparency on PMax placements, so unless you dig into your reports, you might be unknowingly spending hundreds (or even thousands) on placements that damage your brand instead of helping it.

Why does click fraud happen on the Google Display Network?  

Google’s AdSense program, introduced in 2003, allowed website owners to earn money by displaying Google Ads on their sites. While this was meant to provide wider reach for advertisers and a revenue stream for publishers, it also created an opportunity for fraud.

Here’s how bad actors exploit the system:

• They create low-quality websites packed with ads
• Bots or fake users click on those ads.
• These sites constantly launch new sites when old ones get flagged

What does this mean for you? Fraudsters collect ad revenue while you pay for clicks from fake traffic. Worse, your ads could end up on these spammy, low-value websites without your knowledge.

How does your brand end up on these low-quality sites?

A common misconception is that remarketing campaigns are safe because they target past website visitors. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Fraudulent websites can manipulate the system by infiltrating your audience list. Here’s how:

1. Bots search for high-value keywords and click on your Google Search ads, tricking Google into thinking they’re real visitors.
2. These bots are then added to your audience list as past website visitors.
3. They visit their own spam sites, click on your Display ads and make you pay for traffic that’s completely useless. Not only do you waste money, but your brand ends up associated with sites you’d never choose to advertise on.

This presents a double risk: budget loss and brand damage.

The hidden brand risk of Performance Max Campaigns

With Google’s recent API update, advertisers can see impression data for PMax placements. While it still lacks full transparency on clicks or CPCs, it reveals a bigger issue:

• PMax ads appear across YouTube, Gmail, Shopping, and the Display Network.  
• A significant amount of ad spend goes to sites already flagged as low quality.
• Without exclusions, PMax campaigns will continue running ads on these placements, no matter the risk to your brand.

For brands that care about where their ads appear, this is a significant problem.

Common risky placements to watch out for

Here are some types of placements where you don’t want your ads to appear:

• Mobile apps leading to accidental clicks

Certain mobile games, especially Solitaire-style apps, place ads in spots where users are likely to tap by accident. This inflates engagement numbers, but the traffic is completely worthless. Apps like Spider Solitaire or Solitaire Collection are examples where this is common.

• Kids’ games running ads that shouldn’t be there

If you’re advertising a premium product, imagine seeing your ad placed in a kid’s mobile game. Many of these apps run Google Ads, and kids often tap everything on screen, leading to accidental clicks and wasted budget, while your brand appears in an irrelevant, unprofessional context.

• Websites that don’t align with your target audience

Even if you’ve set your campaign to target specific countries, your ads might appear on websites in other languages or irrelevant niches, wasting your budget and placing your brand in contexts that don’t align with your business.

• Low-quality blogs & clickbait news sites

Many sites exist solely to generate ad revenue with minimal or no actual content. If you’re not manually excluding these types of sites, your brand could be shown on sites that don’t engage real audiences.

How big is this problem?

We analyzed data from 801 Google Ads accounts under our Manager Account, looking at placement data from the last 30 days. Here’s what we found:

• 596 accounts were running PMax campaigns
• Across those accounts, we tracked 532,515 unique PMax placements
• These placements generated 315,073,188 impressions

We categorised these placements to see where ads were appearing:

Over 51% of impressions came from Search Partners, meaning ads are being placed on sites outside of advertisers’ control. Mobile apps made up another 15%, highlighting the issue of accidental clicks.

What can advertisers do?  

If you’re running PMax campaigns, you should be actively reviewing your ads placements. Here’s how you can take control:

1. Check your PMax placement reports: Google Ads now provides more transparency on impression data, but full transparency remains limited.

That’s why Producthero has developed PMax Insights, an upcoming tool that offers detailed breakdowns per channel, including Shopping, Search, Display, and Video. By having access to this detailed information, you can easily spot if your campaigns are running where you want them to run, identify potential underperformance and discover new optimization opportunities to improve your ROAS. This tool will be available very soon for all Producthero customers.

2. Identify and exclude low-quality placements: Gaming sites, mobile apps, and random blogs are unlikely to provide valuable traffic.

To help advertisers easily spot and exclude these low-quality placements, Producthero is soon launching PMax Placements, a tool that generates a report with a spam score for each placement. This allows you to quickly identify and exclude the worst-performing placements or those that don’t align with your brand, target audience, or performance goals.

3. Prevent wasted ad spend on irrelevant searches: Advertisers often pay for low-intent or low-quality clicks, not just from wrong placements but also from search terms that don’t align with their brand or have low conversion value.

Producthero’s upcoming PMax Search Terms tool helps you quickly identify these keywords, based on filters like impressions, clicks, and conversions. You can then easily copy and paste that list into Google Ads to exclude irrelevant terms from your PMax campaigns. This tool will be available very soon for all Producthero customers.

While Google’s automated campaign tools make it easy to run ads, they also make it easy to lose control over where your ads are being shown. Taking control of your placements isn’t just about saving money; it’s about protecting your brand and ensuring it appears in the right context. By reviewing your PMax placement reports, excluding low-quality placements and preventing wasted ad spend on irrelevant searches, you can avoid the hidden risks of Performance Max and ensure your ads are working for you, not against you.

Make sure to sign up for the Producthero Newsletter to be the first to know when PMax Insights, PMax Placements, and PMax Search Terms are released!