What is Negative Keyword Targeting?
Negative Keyword Targeting allows you to prevent your sponsored products from showing up for specific search queries on retailer sites. While Commerce Max automatically associates keywords to your selected products using retailer traffic data, you can fine-tune targeting by excluding terms that are irrelevant, low-performing, or brand-inappropriate.
You can add Broad Match and/or Exact Match negative keywords during line item setup or editing. This gives you greater control over which search queries your ads do not appear for, helping you eliminate wasted spend and improve relevance.
Commerce Max associates keywords with a product by looking at organic traffic data on the retailer's site to see what products are most clicked and viewed following searches for a given term. This data helps us build connections between product taxonomies and product brands, and keywords. We further enrich this data with advanced AI, taking into account product characteristics and images shared with us in the product feed. Then, when you add a product to your line item, Commerce Max determines which terms are the most relevant to your product, similar products, and uses those terms for your line item's targeting. Because the terms associated with your line item are all relevant to your product, it is perfectly okay to not have any negative keywords to target.
Match type | Negative keyword | Ads won’t show for | Ads may show for |
Broad match | Men’s shoes | Men shoes | Shoes |
Exact match | Men’s shoes | Men’s shoes | Shoes |
Why use it?
Exclude irrelevant or low-performing search terms from triggering your ads.
Avoid bidding on queries that don’t align with your brand or campaign goals.
Improve campaign efficiency by reducing wasted impressions and clicks.
Prevent overlap between line items by fine-tuning keyword exclusions.
Who is it for?
Advertisers looking to reduce noise and improve targeting precision.
Users managing multiple campaigns at scale who want to avoid overlapping targeting
Not essential for all users, especially if automated keywords already align closely with your product set.
When to use it?
Use this feature when:
You’ve identified keywords that lead to poor-quality traffic or low conversions.
You want to ensure brand safety by excluding sensitive terms.
Where to find it?
Go to Step 2 of the Line Item creation or editing workflow.
Scroll below the Keyword Targeting Strategy section.
You’ll find the Negative Keywords section, where you can enter terms to exclude.