Important

Advertising

Walmart Connect ships negative keywords for Sponsored Products

Max

July 25, 2026

5 min

Summarize with AI

COO at Nova Analytics

Max leads operations at Nova Analytics, helping Amazon sellers optimize their business performance through data-driven insights and strategic automation.

Quick Summary

•Walmart Connect launches Negative Keywords for Sponsored Products on July 29, 2026
•Closes a years-long gap with Amazon Ads that drained budget on non-converting queries
•Expect ACOS compression within 2 weeks on any campaign with a real search-term tail
•Day-one action: export the 30-day search-term report and add phrase-match negatives for zero-conversion terms

Nova surfaces every Amazon fee, refund, and margin shift in your live P&L, across 21 marketplaces. View it in Nova

The 3-line summary

Walmart Connect confirmed this week that Negative Keywords roll out to all Sponsored Products advertisers on July 29, 2026, closing a years-long feature gap with Amazon Ads (Adflux Partners, LinkedIn, July 22, 2026).

Retail media agencies picked it up first, but the change touches every Walmart Connect advertiser: for the first time, you can block irrelevant search terms at the campaign and ad group level instead of watching budget bleed on non-converting queries (Keystone Commerce, LinkedIn, July 21, 2026).

What sellers should read from it

If you already run Amazon PPC, this is not a new mental model, it is a lever you have been missing on the Walmart side. Walmart Sponsored Products lacked a clean way to suppress unwanted query traffic, so brand-adjacent, mis-mapped and low-intent terms drained spend. Negative keywords fix that on day one and change the achievable ACOS floor on Walmart.

For cross-marketplace advertisers, expect ACOS to compress within the first two weeks on any Walmart campaign with a real search-term tail. That in turn changes the ROAS math on whether Walmart deserves a bigger share of the overall retail media budget in H2.

The 5-step launch-day playbook

Export the 30-day search-term report for every Sponsored Products campaign the moment negative keywords go live.
Tag every term with zero conversions and above-average spend as a phrase-match negative candidate.
Add competitor brand terms you never want to bid on as exact-match negatives.
Add category-adjacent terms that convert on other brands but drag your ACOS as phrase negatives.
Re-run the report at day 7 and day 14. New negatives every week, not once at launch. See the Walmart Connect keyword-targeting docs for match-type nuances (Walmart Connect Advertising Help).

How Nova helps

Advertising analytics - baseline your Amazon Sponsored Products ACOS so you can compare Walmart against a real Amazon benchmark, not a spreadsheet.
Amazon P&L - measure net contribution per ASIN after ad spend so you can move budget between channels on real margin, not gross revenue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about this topic

Walmart Connect is rolling out Negative Keywords for all Sponsored Products advertisers on July 29, 2026. Advertisers will be able to add exact and phrase negatives at the campaign and ad group level, the same way Amazon Ads has offered for years.

Until now, Walmart Sponsored Products had no clean way to block irrelevant search terms. Cross-marketplace advertisers were paying for clicks they never wanted on branded and category-adjacent queries. Negative keywords remove that leak on day one.

Export the search-term report for the last 30 days, tag every term with zero conversions and above-average spend, and paste those into a phrase-match negative list. Do the same for competitor brand terms you do not want to bid on. Watch ACOS for 7 days, then repeat.

Verified Sources

All information verified from official Amazon sources and trusted industry analysts as of publication date.