The Keyword Match Types for Amazon Advertising

Just like traditional pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon uses keyword match types to differentiate what customer search terms will be targeted by your advertising campaigns.

Different match types help you to create different results and objectives.

The three keyword match types

Amazon uses 3 keyword match types in their advertising campaigns. These are:

• Exact match
• Phrase match
• Broad match

The purpose of each match type, and why you would look to include them within your campaigns, is different for each one.

Exact match

For your ad to appear, the customer search term must include your exact keyword, or very close variations. In the event that your exact keyword contains multiple words, this needs to be in the exact order.

Examples for the exact match “blue jumper”:

Customer Search Term	Ad Visibility
blue jumper	Appears
blue jumpers	Appears
jumper blue	Doesn’t appear (incorrect order)
mens blue jumper	Doesn’t appear (additional word)

Phrase match

For your ad to appear, the customer search term must include your exact keyword, or very close variations. The search term can also include words before and/or after your targeted keyword, as long as your keyword stays in the same order.

Examples for the phrase match “blue jumper”:

Customer Search Term	Ad Visibility
blue jumper	Appears
womens blue jumper	Appears
blue sports jumper	Doesn’t appear (additional word in the middle)
red jumper	Doesn’t appear (full keyword not included)

Broad match

For your ad to appear, the customer search term must include all of the words from your keyword, or close variations. The words can be in any order and they can include additional words within the search term.

Examples for the broad match “blue jumper”:

Customer Search Term	Ad Visibility
blue jumper for men	Appears
mens blue comfy jumper	Appears
blue and red jumper	Appears
red jumper for women	Doesn’t appear (‘blue’ not included)

Negative keywords

When it comes to keyword match types with your negative targeting, these work in similar ways.

• Negative exact – Your ads will not show for any customer search terms that match the exact keyword or close variations.
• Negative phrase – Your ads will not show for any customer search terms that contain the complete phrase or close variations.

Negative broad match targeting is not available on Amazon.

The difference between Broad match type and Automatic campaigns

Many new advertisers often get broad match and automatic campaigns confused due to the large number of keywords that these can target.

It’s important to note that, when it comes to keyword targeting, automatic campaigns identify potentially relevant keywords by using your listing content and related customer searches.

Broad match types help you to identify more keywords whilst retaining control over the type of keywords that you are focusing on.

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