Microsoft Ads Expands Excluded Content Terms for Advertisers

In late September 2026, Microsoft Advertising expanded the availability of Excluded Content Terms, a tool that allows advertisers to exclude unwanted words and phrases from the titles of pages alongside which their ads may appear. Previously, the feature had been rolling out on a limited basis. On September 28, industry publications reported that Microsoft had removed the limited-availability notice from its main help documentation. This indicates a broader rollout, but does not confirm that the feature is already available in every account.

The update is particularly important for brands running automated advertising campaigns with brand safety and brand suitability requirements. It helps restrict undesirable contexts, but does not guarantee complete placement control and may reduce the available advertising inventory.

What Are Excluded Content Terms?

Excluded Content Terms are a list of words and phrases advertisers use to define undesirable advertising contexts. Microsoft matches these terms against web page titles and prevents ads from appearing alongside content that matches an exclusion.

For example, an electronics manufacturer could add the phrase faulty tech devices to avoid placing its ads next to pages whose titles contain the relevant wording. Similarly, a brand might exclude topics related to scandals, product recalls, dangerous incidents, or other unwanted associations.

It is important to understand the limits of this mechanism. This is not a negative keyword list for search queries, nor is it a comprehensive analysis of every meaning conveyed by an article. The documentation describes matching against page titles specifically. Microsoft does not provide exhaustive public matching rules, so without further testing it is not possible to claim that the system uses exact matching, phrase matching, or automatically accounts for every closely related variation.

How Brand Safety Was Managed Before

Before Excluded Content Terms were introduced, Microsoft Advertising already offered other ways to protect the advertising environment.

Website Exclusion Lists allowed advertisers to block ads from appearing on specified websites or domains. This is useful when an entire publisher does not meet a brand's requirements, but it is too broad when the concern involves only one topic on an otherwise acceptable news or informational website.

Content Exclusions make it possible to exclude broad categories of sensitive material. Microsoft also uses content verification technologies, including through its partnership with Integral Ad Science (IAS), to reduce the risk of ads appearing near unsuitable content.

Both approaches have limitations. Blocking an entire website can eliminate high-quality ad placements, while category-level filters do not always reflect an individual advertiser's requirements. For example, a medical device manufacturer may not consider all healthcare news undesirable, but might want to avoid pages discussing a specific product recall.

Excluded Content Terms add a more granular layer of control between these two approaches, based on the terminology used in page titles.

What Changed in August and September 2026?

On August 5, 2026, industry publications reported the initial rollout of Excluded Content Terms, primarily in the context of Audience Ads. At that time, the feature was being introduced gradually and was not available to all advertisers.

By late September, Microsoft had removed the limited-availability notice from its main Content Suitability help page. On September 28, Search Engine Land reported broader access for advertisers. However, other sections of Microsoft's documentation still contained notices about a gradual rollout. It is therefore more accurate to describe an expansion in availability than to guarantee the setting is present in every account without checking.

The documentation specifies the following parameters:

• Advertisers can specify up to 1,000 excluded terms.
• Exclusions are configured in the Microsoft Advertising interface under Tools → Content suitability → Excluded content terms.
• Terms can be added at the account level or during campaign setup.
• According to the documentation, exclusions added during campaign setup are automatically applied to all campaigns in the account.
• The feature is described for Audience, Performance Max, Search, and Shopping. Support for Premium Streaming is not specified in the reviewed documentation.

The final point does not mean that page-title exclusions change how ads match search queries in Search or Shopping campaigns. Excluded Content Terms concern the suitability of the advertising environment, whereas Negative Keywords control a different mechanism: excluding search queries.

How to Find and Configure Excluded Content Terms

Step 1. Open the setting

Open the relevant advertising account in Microsoft Advertising and go to Tools → Content suitability. If the interface includes Excluded content terms, you can begin creating the list.

Step 2. Identify brand-specific risks

Compile terms that reflect the brand's actual restrictions. Useful inputs include the internal Brand Safety Policy, a list of reputational risks, legal team requirements, and examples of undesirable ad placements.

Step 3. Review your wording

Overly broad terms may exclude a large amount of acceptable content. Overly narrow phrases may miss different ways of describing the same topic. For international campaigns, review relevant language variations separately.

Step 4. Check the scope of the exclusions

Save the list and verify where it applies. It is especially important to remember that, according to Microsoft's documentation, terms entered from an individual campaign interface apply across the account. This is a critical limitation for agencies and advertisers managing multiple product lines: an exclusion that makes sense for one campaign could be excessive for another.

Step 5. Monitor results

After implementation, track changes in reach, impressions, spend, and the quality of resulting conversions. Creating an exclusion list should not be treated as proof of improved brand safety without reviewing actual placements and business outcomes.

How Excluded Content Terms Differ From Negative Keywords

The tool's name can create confusion with the familiar negative keywords in Microsoft Ads. However, the mechanisms serve different purposes.

Negative Keywords exclude search queries that should not trigger an ad. For example, a seller of new equipment might exclude searches indicating an intent to buy used products.

Excluded Content Terms limit the placement of ads alongside certain page content, based on words in page titles. They are not intended to control search campaign keyword targeting and do not replace negative keywords.

Website Exclusion Lists, by contrast, exclude advertising sources by website address, while Content Exclusions impose broader topic-based restrictions. These controls complement one another rather than being interchangeable.

Who Benefits Most From This Update?

Large brands with formal Brand Safety Policies can use the new setting to translate some of their internal restrictions into specific terms within the advertising platform.

Financial institutions, healthcare businesses, and other regulated companies may use it to avoid undesirable contexts. It does not, however, replace legal review of advertising materials or compliance with industry regulations.

Advertisers actively using Audience and Performance Max campaigns gain an additional way to control the surrounding content when running automated ad placements.

Agencies managing multiple campaigns within one account need to pay particular attention to how exclusions are inherited. A mistake in a shared list may restrict inventory across several business lines at once.

How to Evaluate the Impact on Advertising Performance

Expanding an exclusion list can reduce the number of available ad placements. This may affect impression volume, CPM, CPC, CPA, and ROAS, but the direction of the effect cannot be predicted in advance.

On one hand, removing unwanted contexts may improve placement quality and reduce reputational risks. On the other, an excessively broad list reduces inventory and may increase the cost of reaching an audience. Changes in CPA can also result from seasonality, bidding, budgets, and traffic mix rather than content exclusions alone.

In practice, it is useful to record baseline performance before changing the setting, maintain a log of added terms, and compare post-implementation results while accounting for other campaign changes. To evaluate lead quality, advertisers should use CRM data rather than relying exclusively on conversions reported by the ad platform.

As of October 2026, there is not enough independent, aggregated evidence to claim that Excluded Content Terms systematically reduces CPA or increases ROAS.

Limitations and Initial Market Reaction

Industry coverage has generally welcomed more flexible controls over the advertising environment, particularly as automated advertising campaigns expand. However, this is primarily an assessment of the feature itself rather than the outcome of large-scale independent testing.

Questions remain about the precise term-matching rules, the completeness of the rollout across accounts, the impact on available inventory, and whether different brand requirements can be managed within a single account.

Furthermore, filtering by page title cannot guarantee the absence of all undesirable content: an article may discuss a sensitive topic without mentioning the relevant words in its headline.

Conclusion

Microsoft Advertising Excluded Content Terms expands the available brand safety controls by allowing exclusions based on words and phrases found in page titles. The main change in September 2026 was broader access to a feature that had previously been rolling out on a limited basis.

For advertisers, this is an additional control rather than universal protection against every undesirable placement. The most practical approach is to build a justified list of terms, account for its account-wide application, avoid confusing it with Negative Keywords, and evaluate its effects on advertising performance and lead quality.