When Running PPC campaigns, does anyone have any insight to excluding areas (zipcode, etc).
Example: to avoid a competitor seeing your ads, would excluding their location hide your placements from them?
Does Google redflag this practice?
You mean the ads specifically? Can't you just use the location targeting available? If there is no state/zip targeting then you're out of luck when it comes to hiding the ads (unless you use an adserver and can serve based on location).
Yes the specific ads.
Like...would the competitor not see the ads at all if i excluded their location?
Well yes if the competitor was say in New Jersey then excluding or not targeting NJ would prevent them seeing the advert along with everyone in NJ. The could probably very easily circumvent this by using a VPN or any ad intelligence platforms. Why would you want to do this though? Surely your actual campaign objective and targeting is a much higher priority than stopping John Doe from Redneckville Virginia from seeing your ad...