Global Negation for Amazon Ads
Relevancy Screening, Cross-Campaign Alignment, and Smarter Ad Spend Protection
FACT: Nobody has ever achieved 100% perfect negation in Amazon Ads, including software.
While negation is fundamentally a simple concept, managing thousands of search terms generated daily across multiple campaigns makes it complex.
We will not tackle the first stage of negation - the basic negation understood as clicks/spend threshold at set time intervals - but instead, explore four in-depth tactics that we at Insiders have been perfecting for the past 7 years.
By the end of this article, we will demonstrate how Global Negation doesn’t just aim to remove a low-performing search term from a research campaign, but it also ensures relevancy, synchronicity across sister campaigns, and future protection against wasted ad spend.
1.?Relevancy check
Problem
Allowing irrelevant search terms to continue spending, even if they only have one click.
Example
Imagine this: you are targeting "wood tables" inside a broad or auto campaign, and one of the resulting search terms is "woodpecker" with 1 click.
How many orders do you think this search term will generate until it reaches your average 10-click threshold? Correct, zero! Why would you even allow it one more click?
You wouldn’t - except everybody does. Browse through your research campaigns, and we guarantee you will find at least one irrelevant search term with multiple wasted clicks in less than 5 minutes.
Solution
a). Run your normal negation threshold schedule.
b). For each research campaign, open Search terms and quickly evaluate each term by asking yourself:
"Would a customer who searches for 'X' have my product in mind?"
Common sense goes a long way here. When the answer is "no", negate exact.
c). When in doubt, search it on Amazon to make sure it is relevant.
Deciding Y/N might be complicated for a heterogeneous term, so we recommend this filter: the majority of results should be your product or a variation of it.
After running steps b) & c) as presented above, few to no irrelevant search terms will ever generate wasted ad spend.
2. Negative roots
Problem
Allowing search terms belonging to an identical root word family to consistently yield negative results.
Example
Continuing our "wood tables" example, we now notice that multiple search terms containing an identical root word, such as "woodpecker", are constantly underperforming and have been negated.
No "woodpecker" variation will ever convert, be it "woody woodpecker", "green woodpecker" or "woodpecker toy".
Knowing this, we never want our research campaign to result in words containing "woodpecker".
Solution
a). Download a bulk report and filter negated keywords for each ASIN/Portfolio.
If you are not proficient in bulk files or your PPC campaign naming structure isn't curated, simply go to your ASIN/Portfolio research campaigns, and from inside each ad group you will find "Negative targeting" that you can export.
ASIN/Portfolio > Campaign > Ad group > Negative targeting > Export.
b). Merge the exports into a single file.
c). Sort A to Z the negative keywords column.
d). Find clusters of negated keywords that have the same root word. Alternatively, you can use a free keyword processor to identify repetitive root words.
e). Ensure that none of these words are relevant to your product by following steps 1. b) & c).
f). Add these single words as "negative phrase".
3. Cross-campaign negation
Problem
Allowing search terms that are already negated in one campaign to continue running in other campaigns for the same ASIN.
Example
Say we have a mix of five research campaigns for our "wood table".
During the negation process, one of the campaigns targets "woodpecker toy", which we rightly negate due to low performance.
But what about the other four remaining campaigns? Are we just waiting for them to target the same search term "woodpecker toy" before negating it?
That’s like having five doors to your house but only locking one of them each day, simply because that’s where the thieves broke in last time.
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Why would "woodpecker toy" perform in another broad, phrase, or auto campaign of the same parent ASIN? It won’t, but most PPC managers and software are constantly generating wasted ad spend when the data is right there.
Knowing this, we are one step closer to global negation by preventing low-performing assets from propagating wasted ad spend across our entire research infrastructure.
Solution
Each newly discovered negative keyword should be negated in all research campaigns.
Here’s a simple system for long-term management:
a). Organize a file called "Global Negation", with a sheet for each parent ASIN.
b). Each file should contain four columns:
*For simplicity of implementation, we will stop at these four categories.
c). After every negation session, paste the results into their proper column in your parent ASIN's sheet.
d). Paste the first three columns in all live research campaigns, and the ASINs (as Negative Exact) in all products targeting & auto campaigns. Most keywords will already be negated, but Amazon prevents duplications, keeping things simple.
*ne = negative exact
4. Defensive Negation
Problem
Allowing keywords already negated in existing campaigns to continue running in newly created ones.
Example
Our "wood table" has now cross-campaign negated "woodpecker," ensuring no further variations can create wasted ad spend.
But what about newly created campaigns? Should we learn for the 6th time that "woodpecker" doesn’t convert for our "wood table"?
Solution
Whenever you create a new research or product targeting campaign, start by loading it up with results from step 3, Cross-Campaign Negation.
This way, you’re leveraging all the insights gained from existing research campaigns.
Conclusion
You now know what less than 1% of Amazon sellers do regarding negation.
Negation is not only about placing a preset overlay on all search terms but taking a more holistic approach across each parent ASIN’s negation landscape.
The basic negation, understood as clicks/spend threshold at set time intervals, is just step one of a more complex process.
Only after running a Relevancy Check, implementing Negative Roots, deploying our findings through Cross-Campaign Negation, and insulating our future campaigns with Defensive Negation, can we confidently say we’re shielding our ASIN from wasted ad spend.
Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
Would you agree that if all of us Amazon Sellers implemented this approach starting today, $ billions in wasted ad spend would end up right back where they belong - in our pockets, instead of Amazon’s?
If you’re intrigued by the tactics we use to save our partners $ millions in wasted ad spend each year, Request Your Manual In-depth PPC Audit NOW (free for brands spending over $10.000 per month).
Rather than relying on software screenshots, we dedicate hours to manually research and brainstorm the optimal roadmap to reveal your brand's untapped?potential.
*We protect our clients' interest by only partnering with one brand per niche, so Stay Ahead & Start Your Audit Before Competitors Do.
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PS: If there is enough interest in this topic, I will be happy to dig deeper and peel more negation layers through exposing more of our tactics.
*Sneak peak
Negation thresholds for clicks, spend or conversion shouldn't exist for accounts, ASINs, campaigns or even ad groups.
These are all averages rooted in the lack of interest to invest effort towards the best results possible, as the only way to correctly set a negation threshold is by gauging each keyword's performance. Yes, we know what that means, one by one.
No one keyword has a perfectly identical conversion rate during a set interval with another one inside the same ad-group, campaign, at ASIN level and of course account level, therefore why use a panacean solution?
At Insiders we've pinpointed this basic negation one-size-fits-all threshold tactic as one of the biggest silent assassins for Amazon Sellers' profit.
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