Introduction

Microsoft Advertising now supports Exact match and Phrase match negative keywords at the campaign and group level, using the following punctuation conventions:

• [keyword] = exact match
• "keyword" = phrase match
• keyword = phrase match

Platform Support

Negative keywords can be uploaded using any of the three variations below. Note that with Phrase match, you would use " " quotation marks rather than the brackets in the table below:

Tip: Negative Exact keywords that have double brackets can be ignored, since Microsoft Advertising will treat these the same way as it would normal single bracket negatives, e.g. car.

You may notice that the punctuation for a negative keyword does not match between the Platform and Microsoft Advertising. For instance, you may see [Keyword] in Microsoft Advertising, and Keyword (match type = Exact) in the Platform, with no brackets. Punctuation does not matter in the Platform; as long as the match type value matches the definition of the punctuation, then the negative keywords are in sync.