Sponsored Products just got a sharper tool. Walmart Connect is rolling out negative keywords, giving advertisers direct say over which searches can trigger their ads at both the campaign and ad group level.
If you’re running a wide product catalog, protecting category share, or fine-tuning campaigns to a specific audience, this is the kind of control that’s been missing until now.
What negative keywords do
Negative keywords let advertisers suppress specific search terms from triggering their ads in select campaigns. While Walmart’s algorithm ensures consumers are seeing relevant products, negative keywords provide advertisers with even greater control when it comes to maximizing and optimizing their budget.
Say you’re a laundry brand running auto campaigns. Without negative keywords, you could end up bidding on your own flagship product name in a campaign meant to capture broader, non-branded demand. Negative keywords let you exclude that term from auto campaigns specifically, so brand relevant dollars go toward the searches that actually need them.
Walmart Connect is rolling this out for Sponsored Products manual campaigns and automatic campaigns on fixed bidding, with two match types. Negative exact-match blocks a search only when it matches the excluded term word for word. Negative phrase-match blocks any search containing the full excluded phrase, even with other words wrapped around it.
Advertisers can apply negative keywords when building a new campaign, or add them to ad groups in campaigns already running.
Why this matters
Search budget gets wasted in ways that can be hard to see until you go looking for them. A supplier with a large portfolio might find their own products competing against each other for the same query. A brand defending its name might get pulled into searches for a completely different category. Negative keywords let advertisers clean that up without touching bids or budget caps.
For a brand managing a large portfolio, this is portfolio hygiene. For an agency juggling multiple clients in the same categories, it’s one more thing that keeps a client’s trust.
According to Pacvue’s 2026 Q2 Benchmark Report, brand average daily spend on Walmart Sponsored Products is up 25% YoY, and CTR is up 23% vs year prior. As more budget flows into the channel and shoppers increasingly turn to Walmart, there has never been a better time for advertisers to take advantage of these shifts as part of their strategy.
Where Pacvue fits in
Now that Walmart has launched negative keywords for Sponsored Products, Pacvue for Walmart Connect is positioned to help you implement this at scale. Instead of managing exclusions one campaign at a time inside Walmart’s Ad Center, Pacvue customers can apply negative keywords by campaign, product, or keyword, and layer them into the same rules-based automation already running their bids and budgets. Pacvue is the Commerce Media OS that helps more than 70,000 brands and agencies manage advertising across 100+ retail media networks, including Walmart, Amazon, Target, and Instacart.
Getting started with negative keywords
If you’re running Sponsored Products on Walmart today, it’s worth auditing this week. Pull your search term reports, find the queries burning spend without converting, and start building your negative keyword list.
Ready to see how Pacvue helps you execute this strategy at scale? Connect with our team and we’ll show you how to apply negative keywords across campaigns and automate your placement precision.
