Campaign optimization keeps your growth on track
Discover the strategies and small adjustments to improve Sponsored Search campaign performance and spark sales.
Get to know the four main levers for optimization
Optimization comes down to adjusting four key components of your campaign to reach your goals.
Budget: Increase or decrease to control your spend and scale.
Bids: Raise or lower to stay competitive in auctions.
Keywords: Add or remove to broaden or refine targeting and discovery in search terms.
Products: Add high performers or remove low converters to focus on sales.
Look to return on ad spend (ROAS) as your guide — not your goal
Focus on ROAS targets first to prove efficiency. Identify your break-even ROAS and apply it to every item in your campaign to ensure profitability. Once efficiency is established, expand your focus to total sales volume to drive topline revenue.
Three ways to optimize for sales when traffic and conversions are low
Let your top products carry the performance
Isolate products with strong conversion rates and focus spend there. Remove low-converting items to make every dollar work harder.
Improve item health to drive better outcomes
Review listing quality, Buy Box win rate, and price competitiveness before increasing spend. Aim for a Listing Quality score of above 80%.
Win top-of-search positions
Review impression share for high-performing keywords. If your ads aren’t showing in the top four “top-of-search” placements, raise bids to stay visible.
Add-to-cart rate for search in-grid position 1 is, on average, 6x higher than positions 2-10.1
Three ways to scale efficiently once your ads have a solid foundation
Expand your item assortment
Add high-performing items not currently promoted. A broader range attracts new audiences and offers more selling opportunities.
Expand your keyword coverage
Use Keyword Performance Reports and the Keyword Planner to find new, high-volume search terms. Increasing bids on these keywords helps more customers discover your products.
Double down on what’s working
Identify campaigns or ad groups with the strongest ROAS or conversion rates. Increase bids or placement multipliers on these proven performers to win more impressions and scale efficiently.
“We decided to launch our seasonal styles early... that campaign saw a lot of success.”
Hymie Gindi, Director of eCommerce at Sweet Hearts Apparel
Footnotes & citations
1. Walmart first-party data, May 1 to July 31, 2024. Seasonal data has not been factored into these results due to the given range of data; results may vary over a different period of time. Past results do not guarantee future performance.