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Channel controls

Channel controls are a Demand Gen setting that lets you choose where an ad group's ads appear, such as YouTube, Discover, Gmail, Maps or the Display Network.

How it works

A Demand Gen campaign can serve on YouTube (in-stream, in-feed and Shorts), Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Google Display Network. You set channel controls for each ad group and pick one of three options:

  • all channels, the default;
  • only the channels Google owns and operates, which leaves out the Display Network;
  • channels you pick by hand, for example YouTube Shorts only for vertical videos.

Each channel you switch off narrows the inventory, the ad space the ad group can bid for, so it has fewer auctions to learn from. Google encourages advertisers to use the full Demand Gen inventory to maximise reach. How a store sets up the rest of the campaign is covered in Demand Gen campaigns for online stores.

Performance Max serves across all Google networks, and according to Google’s API documentation you cannot opt out of specific ones. Instead, it offers the channel performance report: how a campaign’s results split across Search, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, the Display Network, Search partners and Maps.

Where you see it

In Google Ads, in a Demand Gen campaign, at the level of each ad group.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop runs one Demand Gen campaign with two ad groups. The first shows product ads from the feed on all channels. The second carries a vertical video of a laid table and is limited to YouTube Shorts, where the vertical format fills the screen.

Not to be confused with

  • Placement exclusions — a list of specific sites, apps or YouTube channels where your ads should not appear. Channel controls switch whole channels on or off; placement exclusions remove single places inside them.

Sources