Walmart PPC Audit: 8 Steps to Audit a Walmart Ads Account

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Running successful Walmart advertising campaigns takes more than just setting them up—it requires ongoing optimization. A Walmart PPC (Pay-Per-Click) audit is key to ensuring your ad campaigns are delivering the best performance and your budget is well spent. Regular audits help you uncover missed opportunities and areas for improvement, allowing you to fine-tune your campaigns for better results.

In this blog, we’ll guide you through eight essential steps to audit your Walmart Ads account effectively. From analyzing your campaign structure to optimizing ad performance, these steps will help you get the most out of your Walmart PPC campaigns and cut down on wasted ad spend.

1. Evaluate Walmart PPC Advertising Campaign Structure

A well-organized campaign structure is essential to getting the most out of your Walmart PPC campaigns. It simplifies the management process and ensures that your budget is being used wisely. When auditing your Walmart advertising account, start by examining the overall structure of your campaigns.

First, make sure you have distinct campaigns for different product types or categories. This helps you tailor your targeting and ad spend to specific groups, allowing for more precise optimization. If your campaigns are cluttered with too many unrelated products, you risk diluting the performance of your ads and wasting your budget.

Similarly, pay attention to the number of products in each ad group. Overstocking ad groups with too many items can make management difficult and hinder performance. A more manageable number allows for better control and optimization.

It’s also important to monitor the number of keywords or targets in each ad group. If you have too many, you could be spreading your budget too thin. Focusing on a balanced keyword or product target count ensures that your campaigns perform efficiently and can be optimized more easily.

2. Campaign-Type Utilization and Performance

Walmart offers multiple advertising options, such as Sponsored Product ads, Display Ads, Search In-Grid Ads, Native Banner Ads, and Brand Ads. Each ad type is designed to serve different stages of the buyer’s journey, and a comprehensive audit should examine how effectively these ad types are being utilized.

Start by analyzing the performance of each ad type in your campaigns. Look at key metrics like conversion rate, click-through rate, ad spend, return on ad spend (ROAS), and total ad sales. This will give you an understanding of how well each ad type is contributing to your overall advertising goals.

If certain ad types, such as Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands, are consistently delivering strong results and you’re not using them for some product lines, this is a missed opportunity. Expanding these high-performing ad types to other relevant products can help drive more traffic and conversions.

On the flip side, if some ad types are underperforming in terms of conversion or ROAS, it may be time to reassess their use. Reducing budget allocation to these ads and redistributing the funds toward more effective ad types can improve overall campaign efficiency. A detailed look at which ad types work best for specific products or categories will also help you tailor your Walmart advertising strategy and ensure you’re maximizing ad spend across all available options.

3. Match Type Utilization and Performance

Walmart PPC campaigns offer various keyword match types, including exact match, broad match, and phrase match. Each of these match types plays a different role in how your ads are triggered in search results. Exact match keywords ensure your ads appear for highly relevant searches, while broad match helps capture a wider audience. However, broad match keywords can sometimes result in wasted ad spend if they attract irrelevant traffic.

When conducting your Walmart PPC audit, analyze how each match type is performing. If your exact match keywords are driving more sales, consider increasing bids for those. Alternatively, if broad match keywords are underperforming, you may want to refine your keyword strategy to focus on more relevant terms. Balancing all match types ensures you’re reaching the right customers while maintaining cost efficiency.

4. Evaluate Wasted Ad Spend

One of the main goals of a Walmart Sponsored ads audit is to identify areas where ad spend is being wasted. Wasted ad spend occurs when you pay for clicks that don’t lead to sales, which can drain your budget and lower overall performance. Start by reviewing your target list to identify keywords generating clicks without conversions. These low-performing keywords should either be paused or have their bids reduced.

Another way to minimize wasted ad spend is by building a strong negative keyword list. Negative keywords prevent your ads from appearing for irrelevant searches, saving you money. Regularly monitor keyword performance, ideally on a weekly basis, to adjust bids and optimize campaigns. By reducing wasted ad spend, you can allocate more budget to the keywords and ads that drive actual sales revenue.

5. Target Harvesting Opportunity

Target harvesting is a strategy to refine and expand your keyword targeting by shifting high-performing search terms to more precise or exploratory campaigns. Start by reviewing your search term report to identify which search terms have generated orders in your discovery campaigns, such as those using broad or phrase match or auto-targeting. These terms present an opportunity to move into more focused, efficiency-driven campaigns.

By transferring successful search terms to exact match campaigns, you can better control your ad spend and improve conversion rates by targeting shoppers who are more likely to make a purchase. At the same time, to continue discovering new keyword opportunities, you can take these successful search terms and move them to broader match types, such as broad and phrase, to find related search terms that may also drive conversions.

6. Placement Performance and Optimization

Walmart ads can appear in various placements, such as search results and product detail pages, near buy box, etc and Walmart allows you to adjust bids for each placement accordingly. Begin by reviewing the performance data for each placement, focusing on key metrics like conversion rate, click-through rate, and return on ad spend (ROAS). Identify which placements are delivering the best results and which are underperforming.

Based on this analysis, you can adjust your bids to increase visibility in high-performing placements while reducing spending on less effective ones. This helps ensure that your ads are being shown in the most impactful spots, ultimately improving your overall ad performance and maximizing your return on investment.

7. Bids Optimization

Bidding plays a crucial role in any PPC campaign’s success. During your Walmart PPC audit, review your current bids to ensure you’re not over- or underbidding for important keywords. If a keyword is performing well and driving sales, consider bidding higher to capture more impressions and user clicks. It will help you increase sales. On the other hand, reduce bids for underperforming keywords to avoid wasting your budget.

Bids should be reviewed and optimized regularly, especially for competitive keywords. Ensure to bid higher while ensuring your profitability. Using Walmart’s automated bidding tools can help streamline the process and ensure you’re always bidding competitively. However, manual bid adjustments can still be beneficial when dealing with high-priority keywords. Balancing automated tools with manual oversight ensures optimal campaign performance.

8. Evaluate Impression Share for Important Keywords

Impression share measures the percentage of times your ads appear out of the total possible impressions. Monitoring impression share for your most important keywords helps you understand how competitive you are in the Walmart marketplace. If you have a low impression share for crucial keywords, you’re likely missing out on potential sales. This is especially important when running ads for high-demand products or brands.

To increase impression share, consider increasing your bids or adjusting your budget allocation for important campaigns. However, make sure the keywords you’re focusing on are actually driving conversions. Prioritizing high-converting keywords ensures that your increased visibility translates into more sales and higher return on investment (ROI).

Conclusion

A successful Walmart PPC audit involves a thorough review of your advertising campaigns, keyword performance, ad placement, and bidding strategy. By following these eight steps—evaluating your campaign structure, reviewing match types, reducing wasted ad spend, harvesting new keywords, optimizing placements, adjusting bids, and improving impression share—you can ensure your Walmart Ads account is optimized for success.

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