Free tools · Display

Placement Waste Finder & Exclusion Builder

Display budgets leak through junk placements: puzzle apps, misclick farms, content nobody chose to see. Paste your "Where ads showed" report, see exactly where the money goes, and walk away with an exclusion list. Nothing is uploaded; it all runs locally.

1 · Paste your placement report
From Display, Demand Gen or video campaigns. Columns we look for: where ads showed · placement type · impressions · clicks · cost · conversions
or paste below. Either way, the report stays on your machine.
Suspiciously high in-app CTRs are usually misclicks, not interest.

The quietest leak in display advertising

Nobody plans to advertise inside a free flashlight app. But automated display targeting buys reach wherever it's cheap, and it's cheapest where attention is worthless. The tell is a pattern this tool surfaces in seconds: mobile app placements with wildly high CTRs and zero conversions. Those clicks are thumbs missing a game button, and you pay for every one. A placement audit is among the highest-ROI twenty minutes in display management, yet it rarely happens because the report sits three menus deep and the analysis means eyeballing hundreds of rows. Paste it here instead: the waste maths, the app flags and the exclusion file are done before your coffee cools.

How to use this tool

  1. In Google Ads, open Insights & reports → When and where ads showed → Where ads showed, set 30 to 90 days, and download the table.
  2. Paste or upload it above.
  3. Review the flags: unconverting spend comes pre-ticked, and app placements with misclick-level CTRs are called out.
  4. Download the list and add it under Content → Exclusions, ideally at account level so it protects every campaign, PMax included.

FAQ

Is my account data uploaded?
No. The report is parsed and analysed entirely in your browser, it never leaves your machine and we never see it.
Where do I find the placement report?
In Google Ads: Insights & reports, then 'When and where ads showed', then 'Where ads showed'. Set 30 to 90 days and download the table. It covers Display, Demand Gen and video traffic.
Why are mobile apps flagged so aggressively?
In-app display inventory is where accidental clicks live: banner ads next to game buttons routinely produce CTRs of 5 to 10% with nothing to show for it. Very few advertisers convert profitably there, so app placements with spend and no conversions are the first exclusions to make.
Does this work for Performance Max?
Partly. PMax publishes a placement report but it shows impressions only, no cost or conversion split, so waste maths isn't possible there. You can still exclude placements at account level, which applies to PMax too, and this list is the right starting point.
Display leaking beyond placements? Audiences, bidding and creative all play their part. Our free audit looks at the lot.