How to block publishers (sites) in Taboola

Taboola’s blockable unit is the site: the publisher running the widget your ad appeared in. Taboola documents no advertiser IP exclusion list, and language targeting isn’t among its controls. The other levers are coarse: OS and OS version, browser, device and connection type.

A site either stays on your campaign or comes off it, so the evidence has to be per site and about your traffic, not a network average. ValidVisit judges every paid visit Valid or Invalid on your landing page, with its evidence, and pins the verdict to the site that sent it. The verdict takes no site off your campaign; you make the cut in Taboola.

Add these four Taboola macros to your campaign’s tracking:

• {site} as vv_publisher_id: the publisher site’s name, the value Block Sites takes. Check it against the Site Name column of Taboola’s Sites report before you block; Taboola also offers {site_id}, but its report shows no ID column to match it against.
• {click_id} as vv_click_id: required. Ties each judged visit to one Taboola click record.
• {campaign_id} as vv_campaign_id: required. Keeps campaigns apart when one site serves several.
• {campaign_item_id} as vv_ad_id: the ad item. Shows whether a weak site is weak for every creative or only one.

The Taboola tracking tokens page lists each macro with its ValidVisit parameter.

After a few days of judged traffic, ValidVisit rolls visits up by site and ranks them worst first (what that looks like on Taboola). Read two numbers together: the share of a site’s visits judged invalid, and how many visits it sent. A high share on real volume is a block. A high share on a handful of visits is a watch.

Three checks before a site goes on the list:

• The site or the creative? If one {campaign_item_id} on a site draws Invalid verdicts while another ad on the same site draws valid visits, look at the creative before blaming the publisher.
• The hour? A high-volume site whose invalid share runs well above your baseline in low-traffic hours but looks valid at peak deserves a closer read.
• Automation or indifference? Low-intent people bounced onto arbitrage pages aren’t automation. A bot-heavy site warrants a block; a low-intent human one may only warrant a lower bid.

Taboola gives you several ways onto the block list. Pick by volume:

1. A few sites, one campaign. Open the campaign’s Set-Up page, go to Advanced Options → Block Sites and add the site names.
2. Straight from the data. Block sites directly from the Sites report in Realize while you review performance.
3. Many sites at once. Upload in bulk via Excel, or use the Backstage API if you manage lists in code.

ValidVisit’s Cut-list exports the flagged sites as a paste-ready CSV, so the bulk route is usually fastest. Taboola stops serving the campaign on blocked sites from then on.

Taboola doesn’t publish its cap, but advertisers on its API forum report an error past 1,500 blocked or targeted sites per campaign, with a separate 1,500 at account level that some accounts have had raised. Ask your account manager for yours. Treat the list as a budget:

• Rank by invalid visits (share times volume), not by share alone. A site with one bad afternoon doesn’t deserve one of 1,500 slots.
• Block structurally bad sites, not isolated spikes, and prune marginal entries before the list fills.
• Keep the account-level list for sites that are bad on every campaign, and campaign lists for sites that are bad for one offer.

Taboola can carry part of the load: Custom Rules on the Sites dimension block sites automatically against conditions you set, and SpendGuard auto-blocks sites. Neither reads ValidVisit’s verdicts, so review what they miss against the ranking.

Taboola publishes no invalid-traffic credit policy. What exists is a general refund request, which you can raise for any reason with your Account Manager or support@taboola.com. It asks for your account name, account ID and as many details as possible; nothing specific to invalid traffic is listed. Credit-line advertisers must object to an invoice in writing within 10 days of receiving it, and Taboola’s terms make its own click counts definitive.

That makes a site-level record your strongest material: the site, the dates, the number of visits and the share judged invalid. The refunds-by-network comparison sets Taboola’s terms beside other networks’.

Compare the same campaign over equal windows before and after the block. The invalid share should fall, and the budget goes to the sites still on the campaign. If you run SmartBid, fewer invalid visits firing your conversion pixel also means cleaner signals for it to learn from.

New sites that arrive with volume and a high invalid share are the next round. The same loop, network by network, is in blocking bad sources by network, and the terms used here are defined in the glossary.