Keyword Research, Match Types, and Negative Targeting Strategy
Research sources
Build keyword lists from the search-term report of automatic campaigns, Amazon's suggested keywords, Brand Analytics search-term rankings, and structured competitor research. Group terms by intent - category words, attribute words, brand words, problem words - because intent decides the match type and the bid.
Match types and close variants
Broad match matches synonyms, related terms, misspellings and word reorderings. Phrase match requires the phrase plus optional words before or after. Exact match matches the term or its close variants, including plurals, misspellings and reorderings with the same meaning. Broader matches reach more traffic and convert worse; the standard ladder is broad or phrase for discovery, exact for proven converters, with progressively higher bids as intent tightens.
Negative targeting
Negative exact blocks one query; negative phrase blocks any query containing that phrase and is the stronger tool for removing a root word. Negatives exist only as exact and phrase - there is no negative broad. In Sponsored Products, negatives can sit at campaign or ad group level, and campaign-level is the safe default. Negative product targets handle unwanted ASINs in product-targeting campaigns.
Traps
Expecting a negative exact to stop all variants, forgetting that negatives only block future traffic (historical spend stays), negating a term after two or three clicks, and adding the same term as both a keyword and a negative.
Rule of thumb
Harvest a search term into its own exact-match ad group once it has produced an order and roughly ten or more clicks; negate non-converting terms at roughly 15 to 20 clicks with no orders, and negate the irrelevant root rather than the single query.