Walmart Connect Negative Keywords

Walmart Connect launched negative keywords for Sponsored Products on July 29, 2026. The update gives advertisers more control over where their ads appear by allowing them to block specific search terms at either the campaign or ad group level.

There are two options: negative exact and negative phrase. The feature currently works with manual campaigns and fixed-bid automatic campaigns, but it is not available for Dynamic Bidding or Target ROAS campaigns.

What Are Negative Keywords?

Negative keywords tell Walmart Connect which searches should not trigger your ad.

They do not change your bids or reduce your budget. Instead, they prevent your ad from appearing for searches that are irrelevant or likely to compete with another campaign.

For example, a supplement brand might want to stop its ad from appearing for unrelated recipe searches. Similarly, a seller could use this keywords to prevent multiple campaigns from competing for the same search term or targeting their own products unnecessarily.

The Two Negative Match Types

Walmart Connect offers two negative keyword match types:

Match type	What it blocks	Example: “phone case”	What can still show
Negative exact	Only the exact search phrase	“phone case”	“phone case for iPhone 15”
Negative phrase	Searches containing the phrase, along with additional words	“phone case” and “waterproof phone case”	“case for phone”

 

Where Negative Keywords Work?

This keywords currently apply to:

• Sponsored Products manual campaigns.
• Sponsored Products automatic campaigns using a fixed-bid strategy.

They are not currently supported for:

• Dynamic Bidding campaigns.
• Target ROAS campaigns.

There is also an important campaign-management consideration. If you move a campaign from a supported bidding strategy to an unsupported one, its negative keywords are removed. If you later move the campaign back, Walmart Connect may restore them on a best-effort basis, but restoration is not guaranteed.

Keep a separate record of your negative keyword lists so you can rebuild them if necessary.

Negative Keyword Limits Advertisers Should Know

• Walmart Connect has set the following limits:
• Each negative keyword can contain up to 80 characters.
• Each ad group can have up to 500 negative keywords combined across both match types.
• API requests can include up to 50 keywords.
• Negative keyword changes do not require ad review.
• Changes go live immediately.
• Keywords are normalized when submitted, so the stored version may look slightly different from the original text.

Managing Negative Keywords at Scale

The Walmart Connect API supports adding, listing, and updating negative keywords. Updates can be used to enable, pause, or archive a keyword.

However, the API does not support directly editing the text of an existing keyword. If you enter the wrong term, you need to archive the original keyword and add a replacement.

For larger accounts, auditing negative keywords ad group by ad group can become time-consuming. Walmart’s Entity Snapshot endpoint can help by exporting campaign, ad group, and keyword data in bulk as a ZIP or GZIP file. Since the endpoint has no request cap, it can be faster than repeatedly using the list endpoint for individual ad groups.

For broader Walmart ad campaign optimization, Optiwise.ai provides a unified dashboard to monitor key campaign metrics such as Total Ad Spend, ROAS, and TACoS.

How to Choose Negative Keywords

A practical negative keyword strategy should begin with your search term data.

1. Review your search term report and identify queries that generated spend without producing conversions.
2. Add irrelevant searches and clearly unqualified terms as exclusions.
3. Look for high-performing terms in manual campaigns that should not be picked up by automatic campaigns.
4. Test a full manual-to-auto exclusion strategy on a small group of campaigns first.
5. Monitor performance before applying the same approach across the account.
6. Refresh your negative keyword list every one to two weeks.

Negative keyword lists can become outdated quickly. A term that was unprofitable last month may become valuable after a product, price, promotion, or landing page changes.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Does Walmart Connect support negative keywords?

Yes. Walmart Connect introduced negative keywords for Sponsored Products on July 29, 2026.

What match types are available?

Advertisers can use negative exact and negative phrase match types.

Do automatic campaigns support negative keywords?

Yes, but only when the campaign uses fixed bidding. Negative keywords are not currently available for Dynamic Bidding or Target ROAS campaigns.

How many negative keywords can I add?

You can add up to 500 negative keywords per ad group, with a maximum of 80 characters per keyword. API requests can contain up to 50 keywords.

Do negative keyword changes require ad review?

No. Negative keyword changes go live immediately.

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