changelog
Keyword Phrase Matching
February 12, 2025
Importance of Keyword Phrase Matching
Keyword phrase matching is crucial for improving campaign targeting accuracy, enhancing relevance for shoppers, and maximizing Sales for advertisers. Until now, only exact match keyword targeting was available, which can be too restrictive, limiting reach and potentially missing valuable conversions. Phrase matching offers a more flexible and effective approach.
Key Benefits
- Increased Reach and Relevance: Phrase matching allows advertisers to target specific keyword phrases and capture relevant variations. For example, an advertiser bidding on “leather boots” would also show ads for searches like “red leather boots” or “women’s leather boots,” expanding reach while maintaining relevance. This addresses the current limitations of exact match, where only the exact keyword triggers the ad.
- Improved Targeting Accuracy: While broader than exact match, phrase matching ensures that the target phrase is contained within the user’s search query in the correct order, preventing ads from showing for irrelevant searches. This improves targeting accuracy and reduces wasted ad spend.
- Enhanced Campaign Performance: By reaching a more qualified audience, phrase matching can improve key campaign metrics like click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. This translates to a higher sales for advertisers and increased fill rates for marketplaces.
- Greater Flexibility and Control: Phrase matching gives advertisers more control over their keyword targeting. They can target specific phrases that are highly relevant to their products, while still capturing variations that might be missed with exact match.
How it works
Topsort adds a new “phrase match” type for keyword targeting: see in the docs
- Using the API, the matchType can be configured by bid
- Using the UI, this is enabled at a marketplace level, making the matchType for all keyword triggers equals to “phrase”
Integration changes are not required.
Considerations
- Synonyms will not be used in the initial implementation of phrase match.
- Query language detection at auction time is not implemented.