Glossaryprogrammatic advertisingad buying

Blacklist

blacklistwhitelistpublisher exclusionadvertiser controlad targeting

Also known as: exclusion list

A blacklist is a list of publishers or websites that an advertiser does not want to buy ad space on. In programmatic advertising, buyers can supply a blacklist to their demand-side platform (DSP) or trading desk to prevent bids from being placed on inventory from those specific sources — whether due to brand safety concerns, poor performance history, or content incompatibility.

The inverse of a blacklist is a whitelist, which restricts ad buying to only the approved publishers or URLs on the list.