seller
Key takeaways
- Set each product's negation threshold at 2 divided by its conversion rate, and judge it against profit per order.
- Ignore the last 7 days of clicks, because Sponsored Products sales can still arrive for a week after the click.
- Relevant but expensive terms need a lower bid, not a negative.
- 1Find margin
Profit per order and conversion rate for each product
- 2Set threshold
2 divided by conversion rate, for example 20 clicks at 10 percent
- 3Skip fresh data
Drop the last 7 days of clicks from the review
- 4Split the list
Zero orders go negative exact, high ACoS terms get a bid cut
- 5Measure
Compare spend, sales and TACoS two weeks later
What Amazon PPC negative keywords actually do
A negative keyword tells Amazon not to enter your ad into the auction when a shopper's search matches it. The search still happens and organic results still show your product if it ranks. Only the paid placement is removed.
Negatives matter most in auto, broad and phrase campaigns, because those campaigns are built to reach searches you did not type yourself. That reach is useful for discovery, and expensive when it lands on searches with the wrong intent: the wrong size, the wrong material, a cheaper item, a used item or a different product entirely.
You can also exclude products and brands. In Sponsored Products the negative product targeting tab lets you stop ads from appearing on specific competitor or accessory pages that send clicks but no orders.
- Negative keywords: block search terms
- Negative product targeting: block specific ASINs or whole brands as placements
- Campaign level: the negative applies to every ad group in the campaign
- Ad group level: the negative applies only to that ad group
Negative exact vs negative phrase
Amazon offers only two match types for negatives. There is no negative broad. Negative exact blocks one search term, with close variants such as plurals and small misspellings. Negative phrase blocks any search that contains the words in the same order, which is far more powerful and far more dangerous.
Guides from Ad Badger and Ecombrainly put the word limits at 4 words for negative phrase and 10 words for negative exact. Keep phrase negatives short and specific to a theme you never want, such as used, refurbished, replacement part or a size you do not sell.
The safe default is negative exact. Reach for phrase only when you see the same irrelevant word across many search terms. One phrase negative on a word like kids can quietly block profitable searches such as kids safe or gift for kids, so read the full list of matching terms before you add it.
Set the threshold from margin, not a click count
Published advice ranges from 8 clicks to more than 30 clicks before you negate a term. Those numbers can all be right, for different products. What changes the answer is how much a sale is worth to you and how often your listing converts.
Use two numbers per product. First, profit per order before advertising: price minus Amazon fees, cost of goods and shipping. That is the most you can spend to win one order and still break even. Second, the listing's conversion rate from the Business Reports page in Seller Central.
Then set the click threshold at two divided by the conversion rate. At a 10 percent conversion rate that is 20 clicks. If a term reaches 20 clicks with zero orders, the chance that it is really a 10 percent converter that got unlucky is about 12 percent, because 0.9 multiplied by itself 20 times is about 0.12. That is a confident enough signal to act on.
Worked example with illustrative numbers
These numbers are illustrative, not from a real account. Take a $30 product with $21 of fees and product cost, so profit per order before ads is $9. The break-even ACoS is $9 divided by $30, or 30 percent. The listing converts at 10 percent and the average cost per click is $1.20.
The threshold is 2 divided by 0.10, which is 20 clicks, or about $24 of spend. A term that reaches $24 with no order has already cost more than two orders' worth of profit. Negate it as exact.
Now take a term with 20 clicks, one order and $24 of spend. Its ACoS is $24 divided by $30, or 80 percent, far above break even. This term is relevant but overpriced. Do not negate it. Lower the bid, or move it to an exact match campaign with a lower bid, and check again in two weeks.
Now a $90 product in the same account with $40 profit per order and a 5 percent conversion rate. Its threshold is 40 clicks. A 20 click rule would negate terms on this product that have not had a fair test yet. That is why one rule for the whole account wastes either money or discovery.
Wait for the data before you negate
Sponsored Products credits a sale to an ad if the order comes within 7 days of the click, for sellers. A search term pulled from yesterday's report can show clicks with no orders simply because the orders have not arrived yet.
Leave the most recent 7 days out of your negation review, or at least do not count a term as a non-converter until its clicks are a week old. Ecombrainly also notes that Amazon can take up to 72 hours to apply a new negative and recommends judging it over two weeks or more, so do not read the result the next morning.
This is the gap most negative keyword guides skip. Weekly reviews are good. Weekly reviews that include last week's clicks as zero order terms are how brands cut terms that were about to sell.
Where to add negatives: the funnel rule
Negatives have two jobs. The first is removing waste. The second is routing traffic, so the same search term does not compete against itself across your auto, broad, phrase and exact campaigns.
When a term proves itself in an auto or broad campaign, add it to an exact match campaign as a keyword, then add it as a negative exact to the auto and broad campaigns that found it. Now the term runs only where you control its bid, and the discovery campaigns keep hunting for the next term.
Add true waste at campaign level so it is blocked everywhere in that campaign. Add product specific waste at ad group level, for example a size word that is wrong for one variation but right for another.
- Waste for every product: campaign level, negative exact or a short negative phrase
- Waste for one product or variation: ad group level
- Proven winners: keyword in exact campaign, negative exact in auto and broad
- Your own brand terms: never negate in brand campaigns, review in generic campaigns on purpose
Weekly negative keyword playbook: 5 steps
Run this once a week. It takes about 30 minutes per account once the thresholds are set.
- Ads manager, in a sheet: write profit per order and conversion rate for each advertised product, and set its click threshold at 2 divided by conversion rate. Metric: every product has a threshold before the first review.
- Ads manager, in Amazon Ads under Reports: download the Sponsored Products search term report for the last 30 days, then drop any clicks from the most recent 7 days. Metric: no term is judged on clicks younger than a week.
- Ads manager, in the same sheet: flag terms over threshold with zero orders as negative exact, and terms with orders but ACoS above break even as bid cuts. Metric: two separate lists, never one.
- Ads manager, in the campaign manager under Negative targeting: add the negatives at campaign or ad group level using the funnel rule, and move proven winners into exact campaigns. Metric: no search term spends in more than one campaign type.
- Account owner, two weeks later: compare ad spend, ad sales, ACoS and TACoS for the edited campaigns against the two weeks before the change. Metric: spend on negated terms drops to zero while total sales hold steady or rise.
Mistakes that turn negatives into lost sales
Over negating auto campaigns is the most common. An auto campaign with hundreds of negatives stops discovering anything, and its sales slide while ACoS looks fine. If an auto campaign's impressions fall by half after a round of negatives, review the newest phrase negatives first.
The second is negating on clicks alone. A $90 product and a $15 product should never share one click rule. The third is forgetting negatives exist. Keep a dated log of every phrase negative and review the list each quarter, because seasons, new variations and new shopper language change what is relevant.
Longer, question style searches are also showing up more often in search term reports as shoppers type full sentences. Do not negate them on sight. Judge them on the same margin threshold as any other term.
When this advice does not apply
Launches are different. In the first weeks of a new product you are paying for data and rank on purpose, so thresholds should be looser and judged against the launch plan, not break even ACoS.
Brand defense is different too. Your own brand terms and close competitor terms often convert slowly or carry strategic value, so standard non converter rules do not fit them. Very low traffic accounts may never reach a threshold on most terms. There, only negate clearly irrelevant searches and focus on the listing and the bid.
If you want a team to run this for you, PPC Spider's Amazon PPC management starts at $995 a month on the Launch plan, which includes weekly optimization and negative targeting for up to $10k of monthly ad spend. Growth at $1,250 adds daily bid and budget management and a campaign architecture rebuild. Every plan sets each campaign's ACoS target from margin.
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