Amazon Advertising - Best Practices Archives

Selling on Amazon may be fun for some, and tough for others. Advertising on Amazon is difficult for everyone, to say the least. Campaigns that control AdGroups, broad, phrase and exact match types, CTR, CR, ACOS and negative keyword phrases with exact and phrase match types themselves! Complex is an understatement, but you can do it! This article is designed to help you understand negative keyword terms and how to properly use them in your Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands Ad Campaigns.

How to use negative keywords effectively in Amazon Sponsored Product Campaigns

Creating efficient and cost-effective Amazon advertising is all about controlling ACOS, creatively handling your keyword phrases as well as how you are targeting items.

But we see many sellers not utilizing negative keyword search term phrases effectively or not adding them to their campaigns or ad groups at all. Correctly using negative terms is key to success on the Amazon Marketplace and good advertising campaign management. If you are looking for a list of Amazon advertising terms, click here.

How to Structure Negative Keywords in Amazon PPC Sponsored Ads

Note, Vendor Central does not allow for Ad Groups, at this time. Neither do they allow negative search terms in Auto Campaigns. If you are only selling in the Amazon Vendor Central channel, skip down to match types below.

Understanding campaign performance is greatly based on Amazon Campaign’s and AdGroups are structured. Knowing how this structure applies to negative search terms is key to proper negative keyword placement. Let’s discuss how negative keywords affect campaigns versus ad groups.

Campaigns control ad groups, all ad groups under them. This is very important to understand as we often see clients have placed negative keyword terms in the campaign level on existing campaigns. Applying negative terms at the campaign level causes these negative terms to be used by all the ad groups inside the campaign in addition to the negative terms added at the ad group level.

Campaign Based Negative Search Term Targets

In the image below, we are showing where to place negative keyword terms for them to be used at the campaign level filtering down to all ad groups inside this campaign.

amazon sponsored ads management negative keyword illustration for amazon ppc help

This tactic can be useful when the campaign and ad groups are targeting a specific product category where consumer search terms could have overlap, for example, smartphones and smartphone cases.

If you sold smartphone cases and you were targeting an iPhone product in a specific Campaign. You might want to place Samsung in the ‘Campaigns’ negative terms. This would cause all ad groups inside the campaign to use the negative term ‘samsung’.

Using this example, here is how the negative terms would apply to the ad groups inside the campaign.

selling on amazon demonstrating match types in negative keywords for ad campaigns in the amazon marketplace. — Amazon Seller Central Campaign Structure Example – One Brand Focus

In the above campaign structure, placing a negative keyword search term at the campaign level would cause that term to be ‘negated’ in all ad groups contained inside the campaign. In the image above, where all the ad groups are targeting iPhone products, adding the negative term ‘samsung’ may be a good idea. Let’s look at another example.

Amazon Seller Central Campaign Structure Example – Multiple Brand Focus

In the image above, where the client is targeting multiple brands in the Auto Campaigns ad groups, iPhone and Samsung, adding a brand name as a negative search term at the campaign level would not be a good idea. Doing so would cause the ad group ‘GalaxyN10-Case’ to not display ads for any search term containing ‘samsung’.

This would be a good time to discuss negative term match types in Amazon Sponsored Product Ad Campaigns. Your options are ‘Exact’ and ‘Phrase’ match types.

Negative Search Term Match Types – Phrase & Exact

If you skipped over the note earlier, it is important to understand, before we move on that there are some fundamental differences, at least for now, between Amazon Vendor Central and Seller Central.

For example, in vendor central, you do not have ‘Ad Groups’ only campaigns. This means if you wanted to set up the advertising structure for either of the images above, iPhone only or the multiple brand example, you would be setting up 3 campaigns, not 1 campaign and 3 ad groups.

How Amazon Search Term – Match Types Work

We will utilize the search term ‘samsung galaxy’ for this example. In the below image, we are illustrating how the three Amazon match types will match for various search terms with terms added in front, middle and behind the targeted keyword term.

keyword match types and how amazon sees broad, phrase and exact match types. — Example, Amazon Match Types

The Broad Keyword Match is just that, the broadest match type you can use. It will match the search term even if there is a word added in front, middle or behind the targeted keyword term/phrase.

Phrase Match type will match a search term/phrase if a word is added in front or behind the phrase, but not in the middle of the phrase.

Exact Match is exactly that. It will only match a search phrase if the customer types in the exact term or phrase we are targeting. Anything added in front, middle or behind the phrase will not match. Note, we do believe that if your term allows for east pluralization, for example, adding only an ‘s’ to the term to make it plural it will still match.

Ad Group Based Negative Search Term Targets

The other method for applying negative keywords to your Amazon click advertising campaigns is through your campaign ad groups. To correctly apply a keyword phrase to an ad group as a negative term, open Amazon’s Campaign Manager, choose the campaign you want to work on and select the ad group you would like to add the negative terms.

Two Common Areas We See Clients Make Mistakes

Adding terms to the Campaign level by mistake. This is a common error as the interface and navigation for campaigns and ad groups are so similar. We advise clients regularly to check their campaigns for negative terms mistakenly added at the campaign level.

Mistake number two we see often is adding negative terms as ‘phrase match’ by mistake when trying to add them as an exact match term. This can cause sweeping issues as you can imagine since the term will match for a wide variety of unintended terms adversely affecting your keyword bids.

PPC Optimization | Amazon Advertising Management

We hope you found this article helpful and it assists you in making your Amazon PPC campaigns more efficient.

If you are having trouble with your Amazon advertising, or have some questions about this article, contact our expert team of consultants today. We love helping people be more successful on Amazon.

We hope you found this article helpful and it assists you in making your Amazon PPC campaigns more efficient.

If you are having trouble with your Amazon advertising, or have some questions about this article, contact our expert team of consultants today. We love helping people be more successful on Amazon.

If you are looking for someone to look over your Amazon campaigns, and provide you with comprehensive suggestions, coaching and reports, contact us today for our one time PPC optimization service.

If you are looking for someone to take your advertising to the next level and manage the account on an ongoing base, we can handle that as well. This is a more involved service and we would like to talk to you more to see if our services are a good fit for your companies needs.

Contact our team today, we would love to talk shop with you and see if we can help your Amazon business grow.

Successful Amazon advertising truly is part art and part data analysis. Everyone has read the articles demonstrating the dedication and research required to create successful campaigns. Some experts say the ability to see trends, and keyword performance is an art or an instinct you just “have.” Others coach that excellent Amazon advertising performance is something you can learn, but you have to be able to “see” many different data streams all at once to become a master at it.

Some or all of this may be true, those in-depth discussions we do find incredibly exciting. However, none of that data matters if your campaigns are not set up in a well thought out, organized manner. That is the focus of this article.

We have been optimizing listings, images, and Enhanced Brand Content, now A+ in both Vendor and Seller Central, for years now. The one thing we see consistently, 90% of the time as a client comes to us for Amazon advertising optimization help is, their campaigns are not organized. Campaigns created in haste with little research or direction other than, “these terms were suggested by Amazon or a 3rd part tool,” they look good, let’s see how they perform.

We also see many clients naming their campaigns using shorthand versions of the product’s title. Then later, they optimize the title more, breaking the link between the advertising campaign and the product. Another common issue is hiring an intern or a similar person to work on advertising management. The account is restructured, renamed, and new naming conventions are implemented. That person moves on and suddenly, the campaign, ad group hierarchies makes no sense to your team.

Our advice, come up with a naming convention, create SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) documents for your company and if you have an agency like us, doing your advertising management, be sure we know to follow your outlines.

Create Campaign and Ad Group names that are easy to understand when viewing in an Excel Spreadsheet. If you are not utilizing excel spreadsheets for bulk changes, you more than likely will at some point.

Think about the scalability of your campaigns. For example, in early 2019, Amazon implemented the Dynamic Bidding System. All of a sudden, new strategies for focusing keywords phrases are possible. However, these new features are a campaign level setting, and all the ad groups in the campaign have to follow suit. This means that if you want to target different dynamic bidding tactics, for a single product or variation, you need to create multiple campaigns. Usually, as your research and product matures, your advertising strategies get more and more complex.

Not every account is the same, and there is not a cookie-cutter answer to this issue. Sit down with your team and discuss what tactics they are using in various campaigns. Do you identify your products by ASIN or SKU? Do you have product categories where it is advantageous to use names?

When creating complicated web sites, you sit down and type up the site’s navigation to know where the sub-pages get placed and try to build the layout for transparent link scalability. It is no different for Amazon advertising. Sit down and type up the campaign names with ad groups. Include details like campaign settings and focus.

When you set up your campaigns with structure and planned scalability, it is easier to manage the successes as well as the hurdles.

Amazon Advertising Management: Help for Negative Keywords