Sugar-free confectionery e-commerce brand
Case study · Paid-media efficiency
A specialist confectionery retailer’s Shopping and Performance Max campaigns were underperforming, and the cause was hiding in plain sight: the account’s own negative keyword lists were sabotaging it.
118
Relevant searches the account was blocking from itself, unblocked
49%→18%
Risky broad-match negatives cut, sharply reducing false-positive blocks
192
Catalogue products cross-referenced against the live search-terms report
What I did
I cross-referenced the existing negative lists against the full product catalogue and a live search-terms report, then rebuilt the strategy from scratch into a two-tier framework (account-wide exclusions plus a tighter list for efficiency campaigns).
What the audit surfaced
- Broad-match negatives were blocking the brand’s own name, its sub-brands, and its core product categories, the exact searches it should have been winning.
- Half the legacy negatives were broad match, creating an ever-widening blast radius as the catalogue grew.
- Competitor and retailer-navigation terms were inconsistently handled: some over-blocked, others not excluded at all, wasting spend.
- Match types were rebuilt so exact match dominates, making the list safe as the catalogue evolves.
The recommendation
Two deployment-ready lists: a global account-level exclusion set and a tighter campaign-level set for efficiency campaigns, with a simple monthly/quarterly review cadence to keep it healthy. Relevant traffic flows again; genuinely irrelevant clicks stop.