What’s new in Google Ad Manager

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Check optimizations for your network

Review this article to learn about new Ad Manager features and enhancements. Updates are usually posted every other Monday. For previous releases, you can review the archive.  

Manage inventory

Making sensitive categories more precise

On August 15, 2025, the sensitive category "Significant skin exposure" was removed from Google Ad Manager. This change is part of an ongoing effort to give publishers more precise brand safety controls. This update means that you can no longer broadly block creatives that appear to show bare skin via this sensitive category, filter creatives using this category, or view this category at the creative level in the Ad review center. 

• If you have any existing protections that block this category or pricing rules set for "Significant Skin Exposure," they no longer apply.
• If these Protections or pricing rules block or apply to other criteria, they will still apply. 

You can still block unwanted creatives with exposed skin using more accurate and precise categories. To block unwanted ads with significant skin exposure, we recommend blocking the following categories if you believe these types of ads are unsuitable for your users:

• "Reference to Sex" in sensitive categories
• "Swimwear" and "Underwear" subcategories under the "Apparel" general categories

You can block additional general categories to further capture unwanted ads depending on your brand safety needs. Please work with your Account Manager for additional guidance if you have concerns.  

We generally recommend that you review and update your existing general and sensitive categories blocks within your Protections on a periodic basis to ensure that your brand safety requirements continue to be met effectively.

Traffic and deliver ads

European Union (EU) Political Ads Creative-level self-declaration field

You will now be asked to declare if you intend to run EU political advertising on reservation creatives via a new Creative-level “Creative contains EU political content” checkbox. If you declare “Yes” by checking the box, restrictions will automatically apply once the new EU political ads policy launches in September.

Line item targeting for publisher provided signals (Beta)

Publisher provided signals (PPS) taxonomy categories you have collected or configured can now be used in reservation line item targeting.

Report and optimize

Run an impact estimate for secure signals (Beta)

To help Ad Manager 360 publishers understand the revenue impact of their active secure signals, they can run an impact estimate that disables those signals on a small percent of traffic. There are two types of impact estimates that can be run:

1. All secure signals: This type lets you measure the overall value of all signals. Use this option to learn the aggregate impact of all active secure signals by running a variant that disables all of them.
2. Individual secure signals: This type lets you measure the incremental value of individual signals. Each signal in the experiment has a variant that disables the signal, while leaving all other signals active.

For details, including how to interpret results, visit Run an impact estimate for secure signals.

Interactive reports: Updates based on your feedback

We recently made the following updates to Interactive reports: 

• Additional dimensions: Serving restriction, Predicted viewability bucket, Bidder, Bidder encrypted ID, Brand (classified), Content, Content ID, Native style, Native style ID, Native ad format, Native ad format ID, Secure signal delivery, Secure signal presence, Secure signal name (delivered), Secure signal name (presented), Secure signal ID (delivered), Secure signal ID (presented) 
• Additional metrics: Ad server total revenue, Ad server CPM and CPC revenue

Optimizations for your network

The new Optimization tips for Google Ad Manager page highlights revenue opportunities customized for your network. You may see opportunities for expert-guided consultations, self-guided optimizations, or general suggestions for increasing revenue. Check often to find new strategies and tailored insights.

Manage network settings

The network level control for non-personalized ads in Privacy & messaging has been deprecated

The ad choice control ("Choose the type of ad you want to show") has been deprecated and removed from the European regulations settings in Privacy & messaging. This will not have any impact on your account for web, app, or video/CTV inventory. We encourage you to use the IAB TCF framework for collecting and communicating users' consent decisions in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland. If you wish to serve some users personalized ads and other users non-personalized ads, you can use the ads personalization settings in Google’s publisher ad tags.

 

See previous release notes