Microsoft Advertising supports Exact match and Phrase match negative keywords at the campaign and group level, using the following punctuation conventions:

• [keyword] = exact match
• "keyword" = phrase match
• keyword = phrase match

Please note that Microsoft Advertising does not support Broad match negative keywords. If you were to upload a negative keyword with Broad match Marin, it will default to Phrase match. If you were to insert a negative keyword with no punctuation into the Microsoft Advertising interface, this will also default to Phrase match.

Marin Support

Negative keywords can be uploaded using any of the three variations below. With two columns (Keyword and Match Type), the match type can be set using either the corresponding punctuation or the Match Type column. So, for example, using the keyword "car," we can upload it with square brackets, with a match type of Exact, or both. All three will result in a negative exact match keyword. 

Note that with Phrase match, you would use " " quotation marks rather than the brackets in the table above.

Tip: Negative Exact keywords that have double brackets can be ignored since Microsoft Advertising will treat these the same way as it would normal single bracket negatives, e.g. car.

You may notice that the punctuation for a negative keyword does not match between Marin and Microsoft Advertising. For instance, you may see [Keyword] in Microsoft Advertising, and Keyword (match type = Exact) in Marin, with no brackets. Punctuation does not matter, as long as the match type value matches the definition of the punctuation, then the negative keywords are in sync.