Negative Keyword

Why it matters

Negatives are where most of the easy savings in an Amazon ad account sit. Every campaign accumulates searches that spend budget and never convert, wrong size, wrong use case, research-stage queries. Blocking them redirects that spend to terms that work without touching a single bid.

In practice

Work from the search term report on a regular cadence. A practical rule: if a term has spent more than about twice your target cost-per-acquisition with no sale, negate it. Use negative exact for specific bad queries and negative phrase for whole families of them.

Also negate your proven exact-match winners inside your broad campaigns, so discovery and harvest campaigns stop cannibalizing each other.

Related terms