You're welcome! Feel free to message me with any other questions 🙂

It means to include the client ID in a custom dimension when you send the hit to Google Analytics. But I think we're kind of going round and round here. All these instructions apply to Google Analytics, which is a different product from Google Ads. The client ID is ONLY used for Google Analytics, so I don't think it's relevant for what you're trying to do.

May I ask a question which seems very basic. What does it mean to include the client ID in the GA hit payload? It might be the reason why ad audience exclusion by Client IDs fails. Thank you so much.

Hey Robert, as I understand it, that Quora comment is referring to blocking users from GA. I don’t think it can be used to block invalid clicks since the clicks are related to Google Ads rather than Google Analytics. Sorry this doesn’t work for you, and I hope you find a good solution.

Hi Ana,
Thanks for your reply.
2) I read it on Quora about using Client ID to block invalid clicks. Here is quote and link.
"It is not possible via the default filters. It is however possible if you have defined a custom dimension for client ID and include the client ID in the GA hit payload. Once you have created the custom dimension the filter option gets enabled, but won’t work unless you populate your hits with the client ID."
https://www.quora.com/Can-I-block-a-client-ID-on-Google-Analytics-This-ID-does-not-come-from-our-internal-traffic-and-his-average-time-per-session-is-more-than-1-hour
From my experiment, it doesn't work the way expected. Client ID cannot be used to prevent from ads showing, unfortunately.

Thank you, Robert 🙂
1) I linked to Google's policies at the top of this article. They don't have a specific regulation regarding IP addresses, though there's a section on geolocation that you can check.
2) I thought custom audiences are for retargeting on other websites. Can you also use them as logic to determine whether or not an ad shows on your own site? If so, then your approach could work, but if not I think you would need to use a different method to hide the ad from certain users. You should definitely be able to block based on IP addresses.
3) Apologies, I'm not really familiar with preventing invalid ad clicks. However, I just searched for "prevent click fraud" and it looks like there are some online guides as well as software tools for managing this.

Add this.
3) Do you have experience with invalid clicks which are done by real people. They just use their mobile devices to search and click your ads when they are BORING or feel needed. What would you do to deal this? Use 3rd party tool?

Thank you.

Again, your post solve my headache. My site has been under invalid clicks for days or longer. I tried to find the IPs to exclude them from Google Ads. Would you might kindly advise below?
1) Does having IPs as custom dimension in GA violate Google's regulation?
2) I already have Client IDs as custom dimension and have those suspicious Client IDs as custom audience in GA and exclude them from Google Ads. Do you think it will work? I still see clicks from 2 of those Client IDs today.

Thank you for the awesome posts as always.

Hi there, I suspect the issue is your Referrer condition on the Theo doi IP trigger, since you're refreshing it repeatedly while testing, so your own site is the referrer. Can you please temporarily disable that condition and see if it works?