How to cut wasted Sponsored Products spend

Direct answer: Wasted Sponsored Products spend is search terms that took budget without a sale (or with a terrible conversion) and are still sitting in auto or broad. Harvest converters into exact. Negate the rest. A practical rule on live accounts: 10+ clicks and 0 orders → negative, unless the listing is brand new and still in learning.

The weekly harvest loop

1. Download the Search Term report. Sort by spend, then by orders.
2. Promote queries with orders into an exact campaign of their own.
3. Negate queries with spend and no orders, using the 10-click / 0-order rule as the default — tighten if CPCs are high.
4. Keep auto and broad on a discovery budget. They exist to find queries, not to scale them.
5. Write the harvest and the negatives in the weekly change log so you can see the work.

What this is not

It is not a quarterly “cleanup.” It is not a keyword list you buy once. Mixing converters and junk in one campaign is how ACOS creeps while everyone blames the category.

If you want the number: wasted spend is usually visible in the first two weeks of a rebuild because you stop buying junk. Rank takes a full harvest cycle.