One of Adspert’s core features is automatically discovering new keywords for your Walmart Connect campaigns. This automation saves you time while ensuring your campaigns keep improving.
In this article, I’ll cover:
How Adspert leverages the Walmart Search Term Report
How Adspert analyzes and qualifies search terms
One way Adspert prepares new criteria for addition
Why low-converting keywords still play an important role
So if you want to understand how Adspert continuously uncovers new opportunities for Walmart Ads in the background, keep reading.
What Do We Mean by “Criteria”?
Before we begin, let’s clarify the term “criteria.”
Criteria is our umbrella term for everything that Adspert can optimize in Walmart Connect: keywords, and in the case of Sponsored Products Auto, products.
Important: Don’t confuse criteria with search terms.
A criterion is what you actively bid on in your campaigns. Keywords (Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Video, Sponsored Products Auto, Sponsored Products Manual)
A search term is what Walmart shoppers type into the search bar before clicking on your ad.
Step 1 – Search Term Report
What Is a Search Term Report?
Walmart Connect provides advertisers with a Search Term Report that shows which customer search terms triggered your ads, how users interacted with them, and the resulting performance metrics.
You can download this manually, but Adspert automates the process by syncing directly with the Walmart Ads API, storing your reports without manual downloads.
How Adspert Uses the Search Term Report
The Search Term Report becomes the foundation for discovering new criteria to add to your ad groups. Adspert uses this data to identify search terms with potential for high performance or optimization opportunities.
Step 2 – Analyze and Qualify Search Terms
2.1 Search Term Analysis
Once synced, Adspert analyzes the last 30 days of performance data for each search term. The evaluation includes:
Performance comparison: Each search term is compared against campaign and ad group averages.
Multi-angle evaluation: Different performance perspectives are considered to get a balanced picture.
Outlier detection: Any search term performing significantly better (or worse) than the average is flagged as an outlier.
An outlier can be a highly converting search term or a poorly converting one. Both are valuable.
2.2 Search Term Qualification
After detecting outliers, Adspert applies thresholds to decide which search terms are strong candidates for becoming criteria.
At this stage, Adspert only has a list of candidates—not yet active criteria.
That happens in the next step.
Step 3 - Work with Search Terms
When reviewing the Search Term Report, there are two main actions Adspert supports:
Harvesting (from auto campaigns)
Search terms that significantly deviate from the ad group average - both high and low performers - can be turned into biddable keywords.
Example: You are advertising an air fryer. The search term “best compact air fryer” performs much better than average, while “air fryer for dogs” performs much worse. Adsper may suggest adding both as Exact Match keywords to gain better control.
This ensures precise bidding control over outlier search terms instead of relying on broader targeting.
Since Walmart Connect does not support negative keywords, Adspert’s AI handles poor performers by adding them as exact keywords with very low bids rather than excluding them entirely.
2. Refinement (from manual campaign)
Search terms from manual campaigns that deviate significantly from ad group performance - again, both strong and weak performers - are candidates for refinements.
Strong performers get added as exact keywords to maximize their potential.
Keypoint:
Both processes identify outliers - search terms that perform significantly different (better or worse) than the ad group average. Adsper doesn’t just harvest winners; it captures any search term that deviates enough to warrant individual bid control.
Together, harvesting and refinement give you granular control over all significant search terms: you can maximize what works exceptionally well and minimize spend on what performs poorly, while still leaving the door open for potential conversions.
Why Even Low-Converting Keywords Matter
You might be surprised: Adspert doesn’t just add search terms that look like winners. Low-performing search terms are just as important.
Here’s why:
Even “weak” search terms may occasionally convert into sales.
More importantly, by adding them as criteria, Adspert’s bidding AI can actively reduce bids for poor performers. This prevents wasted budget while still leaving a slim chance for occasional sales.
Practical Example
You’re advertising an air fryer.
One search term is “toy air fryer for kids”.
Clearly, this doesn’t match your product well.
Instead of simply discarding it, Adspert adds it as a keyword so the bidding algorithm can assign it a very low bid.
Result: Your budget won’t be drained by irrelevant clicks, but you don’t completely close the door if a shopper unexpectedly decides your product fits their needs.
Conclusion
With Walmart Connect, Adspert automates the discovery and addition of both high- and low-converting search terms.
The key idea:
High-performing criteria are added so you can focus your budget on proven opportunities.
Low-performing criteria are still included, but with minimized bids, keeping your budget safe while leaving room for unexpected wins.
Ultimately, Adspert’s AI makes the bidding decisions. The automated addition process simply ensures the AI has the most complete dataset to optimize from—saving you hours of manual analysis.