How to blacklist zones in PropellerAds

A zone is the ad zone where your ad is shown: the site or source. A subzone is a more granular placement inside it. PropellerAds lets you exclude zones in the campaign’s targeting, and subzones too on Onclick, Push/In-Page Push and Interactive campaigns.

A zone that looks acceptable overall can carry one or two subzones producing most of the invalid visits. Excluding the whole zone throws out the good subzones with the bad; excluding the subzone keeps them. ValidVisit judges every paid visit Valid or Invalid on your landing page and attributes it to both levels, so you can take the narrower cut when the data supports it.

Add these PropellerAds macros to your tracking link:

• {zone_id} as vv_publisher_id: the ad zone that showed the ad.
• {subzone_id} as vv_placement_id: the subzone inside that zone.
• ${SUBID} as vv_click_id: required. The click ID PropellerAds uses for conversion tracking.
• {campaign_id} as vv_campaign_id: required.
• {bannerid} as vv_creative_id: the creative.

One tracking link covers push and pop. Without {subzone_id} you can still cut zones, but you lose the narrower option. Every macro is on the PropellerAds tracking tokens page.

Invalid visits rarely spread evenly across a campaign: they gather on particular zones, and often on one subzone inside a zone. Read push and pop campaigns separately, since each buys different inventory.

In ValidVisit, rank zones worst first by invalid visits, then open the worst zones by subzone. If one subzone carries most of a zone’s invalid visits, that subzone is the cut. The PropellerAds page covers both patterns in more depth.

The exclusion lives in the campaign’s targeting:

1. Open the campaign in creation or edit mode and go to the Targeting section.
2. Find Zone Limitation and set it to Exclude.
3. Paste the bad zone IDs. ValidVisit’s Cut-list exports them as a paste-ready CSV.
4. For a narrower cut on Onclick, Push/In-Page Push and Interactive campaigns, use subzone limitation in the same targeting step.
5. Save. PropellerAds stops serving on the excluded zones.

Rule-Based Optimization sits in the settings of CPC campaigns. It auto-excludes zones once they meet rules you set on spend, conversions, CPA, ROI, CR or CTR, which suits zones that are simply unprofitable. It works on PropellerAds’ own figures.

That leaves a gap: a zone can look acceptable on spend and CPA while sending visits that aren’t real, for example when invalid visits fire your conversion events. Review the ValidVisit ranking for those. A zone having one bad afternoon isn’t the same as a zone that’s bad by nature, so give the manual list to zones with sustained volume and a high invalid share.

To narrow delivery beyond zones, PropellerAds targets by OS and OS version, browser (not browser version), language, device and connection type. It documents no advertiser IP exclusion list.

PropellerAds has no invalid-traffic credit clause, and its refunds cover unused funds only. What it does offer is a route to raise a case:

• Its traffic-quality page invites real-time reports of suspicious traffic and says each case is reviewed individually.
• A stats discrepancy needs a reasoned report within 3 calendar days of receiving the server reports; other claims within 30 days of the end of the reporting period.
• Send it in writing to contact.us@propellerads.com, or as a ticket at support.propellerads.com, from your registration email.

The terms say the reporting system prevails, executed transactions are final and fraud is decided at PropellerAds’ discretion, so treat a credit as a possibility, not a right. The 3-day window is the one that bites: export the zone and subzone evidence (IDs, dates, visit counts, invalid share) as soon as a pattern shows. Details and sources are in refunds by network.

Compare the same campaign over equal windows before and after. With the worst zones gone, the invalid share should drop and budget moves to zones that stayed. Push pools keep ageing, so a zone that looked clean last month can degrade; re-run the ranking on a schedule rather than once. The cross-network version of this loop is blocking bad sources by network, and zone, subzone and the other terms here are in the glossary.