Your Amazon PPC campaigns are competing against each other and you're paying for
By Noah Wickham · May 20, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Your Amazon PPC campaigns are competing against each other and you're paying for it
Same keyword running in broad, phrase, and exact, three campaigns fighting for the same impression, Amazon collecting the inflated bid from your own wallet
The setup looks comprehensive on paper, you're "covering all match types"
In practice you're just inflating your own CPC
Broad casts the widest net, syntax is just yoga mat with no formatting, triggers for non-slip yoga mat, mat for yoga beginners, buy yoga mats online, anything Amazon thinks is related
Phrase tightens it up, syntax is "yoga mat" in quotes, triggers when your keyword appears in the search with other words around it, best yoga mat, yoga mat for kids, buy yoga mat cheap
Exact only fires when the customer types your exact term in brackets, triggers on yoga mat or yoga mats and almost nothing else
Each match type has a different job
Broad is for discovery, you're hunting for queries your customers are typing that you haven't thought of yet
Phrase is for balanced targeting, you've validated the term is relevant but you still want flexibility on the surrounding words
Exact is your profit engine, the keywords you know convert at your target ACoS, the ones you bid aggressively on because the math works
The five-step funnel feeds exact
➝ Step 1, run broad to find what customers are actually searching
➝ Step 2, mine the search term report every week and pull the converting queries
➝ Step 3, move winners into phrase with moderate bids
➝ Step 4, move top converters into exact with your highest bids and tightest control
➝ Step 5, negate the exact-match terms out of broad and phrase so you're not paying twice for the same keyword
Step 5 is where most accounts break down
You move a winner up to exact match, you forget to negate it from broad and phrase, now you have three campaigns competing for the same impression and you're driving up your own bid
Exact match is the profit engine
Broad and phrase exist to feed it
If they're not, you're not running a funnel, you're running a leaky bucket