Improve Amazon Ad Efficiency with N-gram Analysis

How FMCG Brands Can Improve Amazon Ad Efficiency with N-gram Analysis?

Running ads on Amazon is almost a given if you’re in the FMCG space today — whether you’re selling chips, shampoo, handwash, or herbal tea.

But here’s the thing: even when your campaigns seem to be doing okay on the surface, there’s often a hidden issue lurking in your account — irrelevant traffic.

If you’ve ever looked at your ad reports and felt like something’s off — clicks are coming in, but not enough conversions — you’re probably right.

And one of the simplest ways to clean this up is something called N-gram analysis.

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🧃 What’s the Problem?

Let’s say you’re selling a natural fruit juice product.

You’re targeting keywords like:

• “mango juice”
• “cold pressed juice”
• “healthy drinks”

So far, so good.

But when you dig into your search terms, you might see things like:

• “juice box for school kids”
• “cheap orange drink”
• “juice under 50 rupees”

These aren’t your ideal customers. Maybe they’re looking for low-cost or kids’ lunchbox products — not premium, healthy beverages.

Yet your ad showed up.
And you paid for the click.

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Why Does This Happen?

Because Amazon matches your keywords using broad and phrase match logic.

For example, if you’re targeting “orange juice” in phrase match, your ad could show for:

• “cheap orange juice”
• “orange juice for kids”
• “orange juice tetra pack”

Even if these searches don’t align with your product positioning.

The result?
You’re spending money on clicks that were never going to convert.

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The Fix: N-gram Analysis

This is where N-gram analysis comes in. It’s a simple but powerful way to spot patterns in the search terms that are draining your budget — and also the ones that are driving actual results.

So what is an N-gram?

An N-gram is just a small chunk of words taken from a longer search term.

For example, take the phrase:

“cheap juice box for school kids”

You can break it into:

• 1-grams (unigrams): cheap, juice, box, school, kids
• 2-grams (bigrams): cheap juice, juice box, box for, school kids
• 3-grams (trigrams): cheap juice box, juice box for, box for school

Now imagine doing this for every single search term that has triggered your ads.

Suddenly, you’re not just looking at individual phrases — you’re spotting recurring words or patterns that consistently either waste spend or deliver results.

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Why Regular Search Term Analysis Isn’t Enough

Looking at your search terms one by one can help — but it’s time-consuming and doesn’t give you the big picture.

Here’s where N-gram analysis shines:

• One keyword can trigger hundreds of searches.
  It’s hard to manually catch all the underperformers.
• Some search terms don’t look “bad” individually.
  But when grouped by a common word (like “cheap” or “school”), the overall picture changes.
• Long-tail search terms are endless.
  But N-grams are finite. If the word “cheap” keeps showing up and underperforming, you can block it — and stop 100+ future variations from slipping through.

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What Can You Learn?

With N-gram analysis, you’ll be able to answer questions like:

• Which words are most commonly associated with wasted clicks?
• Which terms are driving repeat conversions?
• What themes or intents are hiding within your data?

For example:

• “cheap”, “bulk”, “kids”, “under 100” → likely low-intent for certain FMCG brands
• “no added sugar”, “detox”, “organic”, “family pack” → potential winners depending on product

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How to Run N-gram Analysis

Here’s a simple process anyone can follow:

1. Download your search term report from Amazon for the last few weeks or months.
2. Break each search term into N-grams (1-gram, 2-gram, 3-gram):

• You can use Excel formulas or Google Sheets to split them.

1. Create a pivot table:

• Group by each N-gram
• Aggregate total spend, total orders, ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), and frequency

1. Filter your results:

• Mark high-spend, low-order N-grams → add these to your negative keywords
• Mark high-ROAS N-grams → consider building exact match campaigns around them

1. Apply the changes in your Amazon Ads dashboard:

• Add broad-level negatives to trim the waste
• Launch new ads focused on high-performing terms

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Keep It Going

Consumer behavior shifts fast — especially in FMCG.
Run this analysis regularly (every month or quarter) to keep your campaigns lean and aligned with real customer intent.

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TL;DR

• Not all clicks are equal — irrelevant traffic adds up.
• N-gram analysis helps you find patterns across all your search terms.
• It lets you block wasteful traffic before it drains your budget.
• It also helps you double down on high-intent phrases.

Whether you’re selling toothpaste, masala chips, or organic face wash — this approach can help you tighten your targeting and improve ad performance.