Introduction

One of the most effective ways to drive efficiency is to reduce wasted spend on irrelevant keywords that may not be bringing you any traffic. To accomplish this, advertisers may choose to negative match these keywords.

Identifying strong candidates for negative matching can take a lot of labour-intensive research where you are staring at spreadsheets for hours. Perpetua's Negative Match Suggestions is a feature where our engine will find keywords that will impact goal performance when negative matched.

Our platform will present the terms you should consider negative PHRASE matching in the form of recommendations. Once the ad engine identifies search terms that are seeing wasteful spending, it will suggest terms it thinks that you should negative match.

💡 To apply negative matches manually on Perpetua, follow the steps here.

For Perpetua's advice on how to treat Negative Keywords, click here.

How Does Perpetua Identify Terms to Negative Match?

Our ad engine looks at words that (in the last 12 months) have had 0-1 conversion(s) in any search term they have been a part of. When surfacing potential negative matches, our systems only consider Sponsored Product goals that are 30+ days old.

❓ What model do we use, and what data do we take into consideration❓

Along with other statistical controls, a clicks threshold is determined based on the performance of the goal and a spend threshold is determined based on the target ACoS and spend-per-conversion for the goal. Once a term has generated too many clicks, and spent too much, with less than 1 conversion, a recommendation will appear on our app.

The clicks threshold is the minimum number of clicks that must be achieved by the word in order for the algorithm to recommend negative matching it from the goal. This threshold differs for every goal.

These thresholds are further used to limit the words recommended to be negative matched.

❓ What else happens❓

We convert all words to their root word. For example, words such as cared/caring/cares/care all become "care". We remove stop words like is, to, are, etc.

Overall, even with the statistical controls in place, the model becomes more robust with more historical data. Recommendations will become better, and smarter, as a goal matures and has been active for a longer period of time.

For more details, check out our blog post.

Factors to Consider

It can be applied to Sponsored Products goals only. This does not include Custom or Campaign Takeover goals.
Review before approval: Please review the recommendations carefully before approving them. Proceed with caution, as accepting a suggestion that doesn't align with your goal may risk removing important keywords. While the engine is smart, sometimes human judgment is more effective!
For example, if the system recommends negative matching the word "shirts" but you sell t-shirts, it might be better to reject that suggestion.
The algorithm bases its recommendations on historical data, such as clicks and conversions, but it may not recognize that certain keywords are still relevant to your product despite low conversions. Accepting a negative match for "t-shirt," for instance, could block too many search terms, reducing your ad’s reach and limiting customer exposure.
Our system identifies potential negative matches only for Sponsored Product (Classic Multi-Campaigns) goals that have been active for more than 30 days. At this stage, we believe your goal(s) are "mature" and have gathered enough data for the engine to effectively analyze and make informed recommendations.
The recommendations will show keyword targets only and not ASIN/PAT targets.

Strategy-Creation Guide

1️⃣ Go to the Recommendations tab in the left sidebar (1), then locate the Strategies section (2). From the list of suggested strategies, find the "Negative Match Suggestions" strategy and click "Get Started" (3).

2️⃣In the next step, give a name to the strategy and select the goal/s you wish to receive recommendations for.

3️⃣ Click the "Select" button next to the goal's name (1). After selecting, the goal will display the action taken (2) and will appear in the "Select Goals" list on the right side of the window. To remove it, simply click the "Remove" button (3). Once you're satisfied with your selection, click "Confirm Goals" (4) to finalize.

4️⃣ Once complete, you'll be taken back to your previous screen and can press "Create Strategy" to launch it.

💡 Creating a strategy will NOT automatically make any changes to any of your goals. This means that there is no risk in creating one to see what recommendations it provides. You will have to approve or dismiss the recommendation for the negative phrase match to take effect. Once approved, the search term will be added as a negative phrase match target to the goal/s selected.

What Happens After Creating a Strategy?

After creating a strategy, Perpetua's ad engine will begin generating recommendations for you automatically.
Learn more about how to view, accept, edit or dismiss a recommendation from this other article related to Recommendations and Strategies.

FAQs

Find the related Frequently Asked Questions here.

Article last updated October 2024. If you find this information to be out of date, please contact hello@perpetua.io.