This episode is really about one thing: deciding when “no sales yet” actually means something. Because in real accounts, non-converting spend isn’t some small inefficiency. It’s often 30 percent of spend. Sometimes it’s 50. I’ve seen it hit 80 percent. Ten thousand dollars in ad spend, eight thousand going to search terms that never convert.

What changes the way you look at this is separating converting behavior from non-converting behavior. If you include all the wasted spend in your averages, you end up judging new keywords against a broken baseline. Instead, you want to look at what your converting traffic normally does and use that as your benchmark.

Another big takeaway is that not all keywords deserve the same level of patience. Branded terms might convert every couple of clicks. Competitor terms might need fifty clicks before you see a sale. If you use one rule across the board, you’ll end up killing keywords that were slow, not bad.

We’ll see you in The PPC Den!

🦡 Highlights ​​

0:28 – How many clicks before negating

1:07 – Non-converting spend pain

2:39 – Clicks Per Sale (CPS)

3:18 – Conversion rate → CPS math

4:03 – Account-level CPS misleading

5:22 – High-intent traffic benchmark

7:46 – Brand / generic / competitor terms

8:09 – CPS by keyword type

9:31 – Measuring search terms vs CPS

9:45 – 75%-150% CPS range

10:15 – 1.5× CPS decision point

10:39 – Pulling CPS from search term report

11:09 – Keyword failure options

11:29 – One rule beats no rule

🦡 Resources & Links

• 🦡 GET AD BADGER ➡️

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• How N-gram analysis found a keyword with 200 clicks and 1 order

• What Should I Do About Invalid Clicks in Amazon PPC?

• 3 Filters to Use Weekly in Your Search Term Report on Amazon

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• Review all our show notes

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Host and Executive Producer: Michael Erickson Facchin

Senior Producer: Nancy Lili Gonzalez

Podcast Coordinator & Graphic Designer: Sofiia Podash

Video and Audio Editor: Pedro Moreno