4 Best AI Tools for Amazon PPC Negative Keyword Mining
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A Search Term Report full of clicks with zero orders is the clearest signal in Amazon advertising, and the easiest one to ignore because checking it manually across every campaign takes real time nobody has spare. Negative keyword mining tools exist to do that check continuously and act on it — flagging or automatically adding the search terms draining your budget without converting, before another week of spend goes to the same dead end.
Which one to use depends mostly on what you're already paying for. If Helium 10 is already in your stack, its bundled Ads platform now includes this at no extra cost. If you want a tool built specifically around negative-keyword automation at a lower price point, Scale Insights is the more targeted choice. If you'd rather hand the whole account to a managed service, Perpetua is the option built for that.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Negative keyword approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helium 10 Ads (Adtomic/Prestozon) | Sellers already on Helium 10 | Bundled in Platinum/Diamond plans | Rule-based suggestions, with an automate toggle |
| Scale Insights | Dedicated, budget automation | From $78/mo (5 ASINs) | Whitelist/blacklist rules, phrase-negative automation |
| Perpetua | Fully managed accounts | From ~$250/mo + % of ad spend | Bids down to near-zero rather than always formal negatives |
| Teikametrics Flywheel | Keyword harvesting (less so negatives) | From ~$179/mo | Keyword recommendations; negative-match automation has lagged |
1. Helium 10 Ads — best if you're already on Helium 10
Helium 10 Ads (built on the Prestozon platform Helium 10 acquired, and formerly sold separately as Adtomic) surfaces new keyword and negative keyword suggestions automatically once you've set up rules on your campaigns, typically within 7-10 days of a rule going live. You can flip on an "Automate" toggle for negative suggestions specifically, so qualifying search terms get added without you reviewing each one individually.
The pricing story changed recently in sellers' favor: what used to be a $199/month add-on is now bundled into Helium 10's Platinum and Diamond subscription tiers, so if you're already paying for one of those for keyword research or listing tools, this negative-keyword automation comes with it at no extra line item. Helium 10.
Pros: no separate fee if you're on Platinum or Diamond already; automate toggle removes the manual review step once rules are tuned. Cons: only cost-effective if you're already paying for a qualifying Helium 10 plan — not the right standalone pick if you just need negative keyword automation and nothing else.
2. Scale Insights — best dedicated, budget-friendly option
Scale Insights is built specifically around negative keyword workflows rather than treating them as one feature in a broader suite: it adds underperforming search terms as negative-phrase keywords based on spend-without-conversion thresholds, and includes a whitelist rule to protect specific keywords from ever being auto-negated alongside a blacklist rule for terms you always want blocked.
Pricing scales with how many ASINs you're automating — from $78/month for 5 ASINs up to $688/month for 100, or a flat 1% of ad spend for unlimited ASINs on higher tiers. For a seller who wants negative-keyword automation specifically, without buying into Helium 10's or Perpetua's full platform, this is the more targeted and generally cheaper entry point. Scale Insights.
Pros: purpose-built for negative-keyword rules, including whitelist protection most competitors don't offer; pricing scales down for smaller ASIN counts. Cons: narrower focus than an all-in-one suite — you may still need separate tools for keyword research and listing optimization.
3. Perpetua — best fully managed option
Perpetua takes a different approach to the same underlying problem: rather than only maintaining a formal negative keyword list, its automated bidding engine lowers bids on a poor-converting search term until the bid is too low to win auctions, which achieves close to the same effect as a hard negative without always adding one. It also supports pulling converting terms into dedicated campaigns and adding formal negatives to existing ones.
This is priced as a managed, higher-touch service — typically $250 to $500 a month, plus a percentage of ad spend, with custom pricing for most accounts. That price point makes sense for a brand spending enough on ads that hands-off management pays for itself, and less sense for a seller running a lean account who mainly wants the negative-keyword piece. Perpetua.
Pros: sophisticated automated bidding that handles poor-converting terms even without a formal negative; full-service account management beyond just negatives. Cons: meaningfully pricier than a dedicated point tool — the cost only makes sense at a real ad-spend scale.
4. Teikametrics Flywheel — good for finding keywords, weaker specifically on negatives
Teikametrics Flywheel is strong on the other side of the same coin: finding new, high-potential keywords to add to campaigns using custom performance thresholds. Where it has historically lagged the other three tools here is negative-match automation specifically — some reviews list true automated negative matching as a gap or a roadmap item rather than a mature, built-out feature. Pricing starts around $179/month.
If negative keyword mining is your primary goal, this isn't the strongest pick on this list for that specific job — confirm its current negative-match capabilities directly before choosing it for that reason alone, since platforms update faster than reviews do. Teikametrics.
Pros: strong positive-keyword harvesting and performance-threshold recommendations. Cons: negative-keyword automation has been a comparative weak point versus Helium 10 Ads, Scale Insights and Perpetua — verify current functionality before relying on it for this specific task.
How to choose
- You already pay for Helium 10 Platinum or Diamond: use the bundled Helium 10 Ads automation — it's already included.
- You want a dedicated, lower-cost tool built specifically for negative keywords: Scale Insights.
- You'd rather hand the whole account, bidding included, to a managed service: Perpetua.
- Negatives aren't your main problem and you need keyword discovery too: Teikametrics, but pair it with manual Search Term Report reviews for negatives in the meantime.
Negative keyword automation only pays off if the campaigns underneath it are structured well to begin with — our best AI tools for Amazon ads guide covers that broader setup, and if you're choosing between two of the platforms above for your whole PPC workflow rather than negatives alone, our Perpetua vs. Teikametrics for Amazon PPC automation comparison goes deeper on how they differ beyond this one feature.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is a negative keyword, and why does mining for them matter?
A negative keyword tells Amazon's ad system not to show your ad for a specific search term, even if your campaign would otherwise match it. 'Mining' means finding which search terms in your existing campaigns are racking up clicks and ad spend without converting into sales — those are the candidates to add as negatives. Skipping this step means you keep paying for the same unproductive clicks every day the campaign runs, which is one of the largest sources of avoidable wasted ACoS on Amazon.
Can I just do negative keyword mining manually in Seller Central?
Yes, and many sellers start there — pull the Search Term Report, sort by spend with zero orders, and add negatives by hand. It works at a small scale with a handful of campaigns. It breaks down once you're running dozens of campaigns across many ASINs, because the report doesn't update itself and nobody is checking it daily. The tools here exist to automate that exact repetitive check and act on it faster than a weekly manual review would.
Does automatic negative keyword matching ever hurt a campaign?
Yes, if the automation rule is too aggressive or set on too short a data window — a search term with genuinely low but real conversion volume can get cut before it has enough clicks to prove itself statistically, especially for a new or seasonal listing. This is why tools like Scale Insights let you set whitelist rules protecting specific keywords from being auto-negated, and why it's worth reviewing an automation rule's thresholds rather than accepting the default blindly.
What's the difference between a negative keyword and just lowering a bid?
A negative keyword fully blocks your ad from showing on that search term going forward — it's a hard stop. Lowering a bid still lets you show, just less competitively, which can still win some impressions and spend at the margin. Perpetua's automated bidding approach leans toward the second: letting its algorithm bid down a poor-converting term toward zero rather than always formalizing it as a negative. Both approaches can achieve a similar practical result, but a true negative is the more deliberate, permanent block.