Amazon PPC Negative Keyword Strategy: Stop Wasting Ad Spend on High ACoS Terms

Published on December 15, 2025

About this video

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Learn when to pause Amazon PPC keywords with high ACoS and discover a powerful negative keyword strategy that can save your ad spend while maintaining profitable traffic. This video explains why you shouldn't always pause high ACoS keywords and shows you exactly how to use negative exact match keywords to optimize your Amazon advertising campaigns.

In this Amazon PPC tutorial, I walk through a real example using the keyword "jump rope" with a 73.59% ACoS to demonstrate when NOT to pause a keyword. You'll see how phrase match keywords can generate multiple profitable search terms, but the main keyword might be eating up most of your Amazon ads budget, preventing other good performing keywords from getting enough exposure.

The solution involves adding the same keyword as a negative exact match while keeping it active in phrase match. This Amazon PPC strategy allows your phrase match keyword to continue generating profitable search terms while stopping wasteful spend on the exact match version. This technique opens up budget for other high-performing keywords in your Amazon advertising campaign.

This Amazon PPC optimization method is perfect for managing competitive keywords that are too broad or top-of-funnel terms that drive high costs but still generate valuable long-tail search terms. By implementing this negative keyword strategy, you can improve your Amazon PPC performance without losing profitable traffic from related search terms.

Whether you're running Amazon sponsored products campaigns or managing complex Amazon advertising strategies, this approach helps you get more from your Amazon ads budget while maintaining campaign performance. This is essential knowledge for anyone doing Amazon PPC marketing or working with an Amazon advertising agency.

Contents: 0:00 - Introduction to High ACoS Keyword Management 0:30 - Jump Rope Keyword Example with 73.59% ACoS 1:00 - How Phrase Match Keywords Generate Multiple Search Terms 1:30 - Why Main Keywords Consume Most Ad Spend 2:00 - Adding Negative Exact Match for Same Keyword 2:30 - How This Strategy Opens Budget for Other Keywords 2:50 - Harvesting Profitable Search Terms for New Campaigns

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Transcript

Hi, this will be Amazon PPC related video. So if you're interested in that, stay tuned. So I got asked recently when do you eager actually pause a keyword if it has high a cost. It's not that simple, you know, and there are no general rules. But so to pick picture this, this is an example keyword of jump rope with an a cost of 73.59%. So I wouldn't pause it. So in this example, I will just show you if it's a phrase match keyword. These are some of the keywords that will be generated in phrase match after jump rope the original keyword and some of the madeup metrics I've added here. So what we see here is that the main keyword jump rope is taking majority of the budget, majority of the spend. Therefore, all the other good and profitable keywords are not having enough exposure. So, the actual search term which is the same as the original keyword is taking over majority of spend and therefore the overall a cost is going up because it could be that it's highly competitive keyword. It's too broad. It's top of the funnel. So you need to dive in and see what is it that's generating all of that additional ad spend because you will be surprised what you see beneath the surface. Uh here don't get a don't don't be afraid what you can do here even though that keyword is jump rope you can add the same keyword in negative as a negative keyword but only in negative exact. What will happen? Jump rope as a keyword in phrase match will continue to generate all these other fancy search terms with good and profitable sales, but it will stop generating any other additional spend on the keyword jump rope in exact match. So yes, it's possible to have a keyword uh as a jump rope and negative keyword in exact match negative exact with the same keyword, believe it or not. But that's the case. And then you will open up all of these uh open up new budgets for all of these additional keywords to generate more to spend more to um generate more additional good performing search terms which you can then harvest and put into in additional campaigns. So today's video is going to be this short uh but I like to put these frequently of asked questions out there so that we avoid any confusion in the in the future. So let me know how you manage this and if you have any additional questions let me know in the comments. See you tomorrow in the next video. Bye-bye.

Frequently asked questions

Should you always pause a high ACoS keyword in Amazon PPC?

Not necessarily. A high overall ACoS on a phrase match keyword can mask profitable performance underneath. If the main search term (the exact phrase itself) is absorbing most of the budget at a poor ACoS while several long-tail variations generated by that phrase match are converting profitably, pausing the whole keyword stops the good traffic along with the bad. The better approach is to investigate the search term report and identify what is actually driving the inflated cost before making any changes.

What is the strategy of adding a keyword as a negative exact match while keeping it active as phrase match?

When a root keyword like "jump rope" runs as phrase match, it generates clicks both for the exact query "jump rope" and for longer variations like "jump rope for kids" or "weighted jump rope." If the root term is too broad or too competitive and dominates spending, you can add it as a negative exact match in the same campaign. This stops the campaign from triggering on the exact search "jump rope" while allowing the phrase match keyword to continue generating all the profitable long-tail variations. The technique isolates and cuts the wasteful spend without losing the discovery value of the phrase match.

How does negating the root keyword in exact match free up budget for other search terms?

When a single root search term consumes the majority of a campaign's daily budget, all the other keywords and search term variations in that campaign receive fewer impressions because the budget runs out too quickly on the dominant term. By blocking the exact root query with a negative exact match, the budget that was going to that one overpriced term is redistributed across the remaining, more profitable variations. Those newly funded terms then accumulate enough data to reveal which long-tail queries deserve to be harvested into dedicated exact match campaigns.