Amazon Advertising: How to Analyze Keyword-Level Click-Through-Rate in PPC Campaigns

Published on January 14, 2026

About this video

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In this video, I break down why you need to analyze click-through-rate at the keyword level in your Amazon PPC campaigns, not just at the campaign level. When you run campaigns with multiple keywords, each keyword can have vastly different click-through-rates, and this affects your overall campaign performance and budget allocation.

I show you real examples from client accounts where click-through-rate varies dramatically between keywords in the same campaign. In one case, CTR ranges from 0.5% to 38.7% within a single campaign with 17 keywords. This creates problems because high-impression, low-CTR keywords can eat your entire campaign budget while delivering poor results.

The key is to look at click-through-rate alongside other metrics like cost per click, search volume, and ACOS. I recommend keeping campaigns to 10 keywords or fewer for better control. When you have keywords with very different CTRs in the same campaign, you need to segment them out. High-CTR keywords might deserve their own campaigns or even Sponsored Brands campaigns, while broad keywords with low CTR but high impressions might need to be separated into single keyword campaigns to prevent budget drain.

I walk through the exact process of how to segment keywords by match type first, then by search volume, and finally by click-through-rate. This helps you identify which keywords are truly relevant to your product and which ones are too broad or competitive. The goal is to group keywords with similar performance characteristics so you can optimize bids and budgets more effectively.

This approach to Amazon PPC optimization helps you avoid the mixed salad effect where you lose control of your campaigns. By analyzing CTR at the keyword level, you can make smarter decisions about campaign structure, bidding strategy, and budget allocation for your Amazon advertising.

Contents: 00:00 Why keyword-level click-through-rate matters in Amazon PPC 00:28 Campaign structure: Why 10 keywords or fewer per campaign 01:16 Real example: Analyzing CTR differences between 5 keywords 02:48 Campaign with 17 keywords: The mixed salad problem 04:06 How to segment keywords by match type and CTR 05:47 Using CTR to identify high-relevance keywords for Sponsored Brands

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Transcript

Hi guys, welcome to another video about Amazon PPC. In today's video, I'm going to focus on clickthrough rate, but not the click to rate on the search results page, but click rate between your keywords in your campaigns. And why is it important uh not to look only at clate on the campaign level, but on the ad group level and between the keywords. So, I've covered in the past that I don't recommend that you use more than 10 keywords per campaign simply because the more you add, the less control you have and then just create chaos where you cannot control on what's happening and what's not. In most of the cases when you add a bunch of keywords, they're going to have different search volumes. They're going to have all the metrics going to be skewed and then you know just you have some you know like a like a mixed salad of things. Anyway, uh clickthrough rate here is a perfect example. So you only have five keywords in this campaign, but it's important to note that here's a huge difference. I know this this first keyword was the really relevant one for for the product. But here by looking simply at the click to rate, you will see that it's really low compared to the all the others. Now that doesn't mean that you should pause it or do something else with it. But just let let's try to compare the metrics of each individual keyword. And you will see for example that first keyword we're bidding currently $2.23 and the cost per click is even higher than that because of the placement adjustment that we have. But we're bidding even more on the rest of the keywords and we are having much lower cost per click which means that this one is probably highly relevant but you know it's too broad. Maybe maybe there are so many different products they that compete for this keyword and you're bidding high and then still you're hitting the plateau with the bids. You could even go much higher than that up to four or $5 per click. [snorts] Uh but then again, when you take a look at all the others, it means that you already bidding high enough. So you're highly relevant for this one as you can see by the click rate. Then also the a cost is much better for all of these. know but we uh found this keyword also to be uh pretty relevant you know but you know sometimes you have to decide and leave it for some some other reasons I'll explain that in some other video uh but let's take a look another example with much more keywords uh so this campaign has 17 keywords uh with really different kind of of data here so you can see that clickthrough rate goes from 0.5 to up to 38.7 uh which is a mess you know and it's a mess you can see that uh this campaign and hasn't been structured yet uh correctly when we took over over the account. So there's a mixed match types inside which we really don't like. The overall results are pretty good. I mean the a cost is yeah a cost is profitable. Um I mean the at profitable level then conversion rate is also going up and down. Now if you are having this task where you have to segment out the keywords. Okay, first you would have to go and and look at the exact only and phrase only and then you will uh see for example if the exact match type is having much better results than phrase you know the match type that has worse performance uh than the other is going to have to leave you know and exact for example is going to stay. When you do that then you will compare the click to rate. So is it the let's for example do that. So let's I don't know let's put only exact here and you will see but not only by the AOS but you want to take a look at search volume and group the keywords with a similar search volume and then also look at the click rate here. We can also already see that similar as as in the previous results this keyword is probably too broad. You can see that the impressions are quite high but the clickthrough rate is not that good. I mean compared to the others it's complete complete crap but you know it's still converting at high conversion rate and the a cost is good you know but we have to think about maybe uh if you leave this as it is you know the number of keywords is is fine it's eight keywords per campaign but then again um you will most probably have this one uh this keyword that is going to eat all the budget that you assigned per campaign. So you probably going to remove that, maybe create a single keyword campaign for that one and then leave all the others, you know, because they are somewhat close enough, you know, you're bidding quite high on them. Uh so it means it's not, you know, that saturated. Um okay, so that that would be it for for the segmentation. For example, this would be okay. It's spending 281. And then let's take a look at the phrase match. Yeah, spending much much higher. So you have most probably this campaign would stay as phrase and I would um create a new one for for the exact you know the drill how that goes. Um and yeah here also you would probably have to think about know when you when sorry if you would look at the campaign level metrics you would then think okay I'm having this number of clicks like 1,000 something and uh this number of orders and everything is fine. But when you get inside you will see that some of these keywords I mean click to rate it's simply uh similar to what you have on the search results page when you when you compare like you can look at it like as as different products in a way know and some of these are just highly relevant much more relevant and for for the target audience advertising this product than the other ones. So that's something also to to take into consideration. Maybe even segment out these keywords with high clate to be a separate campaign. Maybe launch sponsor brands with them. But you know it's I think that click rate on a keyword level is not something that uh many uh PPC specialists look at and they they should be. So I wanted to shed some light on this. Um I hope you find this useful. Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments and see you tomorrow in the next video. Bye-bye.

Frequently asked questions

Why should you analyze click-through rate at the keyword level rather than just the campaign level in Amazon PPC?

Campaign-level CTR averages out the performance of all keywords inside it, hiding the fact that individual keywords can behave very differently. In a real account example from the video, a single campaign with 17 keywords had CTRs ranging from 0.5% to 38.7%. A broad keyword with very high impressions but very low CTR can absorb most of the daily budget while returning poor results, yet the campaign-level CTR may still look acceptable. Looking at each keyword individually reveals which terms are draining budget and which are genuinely relevant.

What does a very low CTR on a keyword with high impressions usually signal?

It typically means the keyword is too broad, pulling in searches from shoppers who see your ad but do not find it relevant enough to click. In the example from the video, one keyword had high impressions, a low CTR, and a much higher cost per click than the rest of the campaign, indicating heavy competition with many competing product types. Even if that keyword converts at a reasonable rate when it does get a click, its poor CTR means it is absorbing a disproportionate share of budget. The recommended action is to move it into its own single keyword campaign so it cannot cannibalize budget from better-performing keywords.

How can keyword-level CTR analysis inform Sponsored Brands campaign strategy?

Keywords with unusually high CTRs stand out as terms where your product is highly relevant and where shoppers are very likely to engage with your ad. These high-relevance keywords are prime candidates for dedicated Sponsored Brands campaigns, because placing your brand banner and headline at the top of search for those terms amplifies the visibility advantage you already have. Identifying them through CTR analysis within your Sponsored Products campaigns gives you a data-driven shortlist for Sponsored Brands targeting rather than relying on assumptions about which keywords deserve premium placement.