Placements are locations on the Google Content Network where your ad can appear. A placement can be an entire website, a subset of a website (such as a selection of pages from that site), or even an individual ad unit positioned on a single page.
You'll see placements mentioned a lot in the context of the Google Content Network because we distinguish between automatic placements and managed placements.
If you have keywords in your ad group and are targeting the Content Network, we use contextual targeting to determine "automatic placements" where your ads appear.
Managed placements are placements you choose to manage separately for increased control. You can increase or decrease your ad delivery by setting unique bids for each of your managed placements, or you can use managed placements to restrict the sites in the Content Network where your ads appear.
You can also choose certain placements on which you don't want to run ads (excluded placements).
Learn more about placements.
