How do branded and competitor keywords work?

Branded Search allows Sponsored Product ads to appear when shoppers search for brand names, including both your own brand terms and competitor brand terms. By bidding on your own branded terms, you can defend your position and maintain visibility, while bidding on competitor keywords helps expand reach and drive category share growth.

How does bidding work?

You can set a unique bid for each keyword or make bulk bid adjustments across multiple keywords. Your bid represents the maximum amount you are willing to pay per click. DoorDash uses a second price auction model. When multiple advertisers are eligible to show for the same search, ads are ranked based on bids and relevance. The highest ranked ad wins the auction, but pays only the amount needed to beat the next highest competitor — not their full bid.

Why is my ad not serving on a keyword?

A keyword may be eligible based on match logic or category alignment, but still not meet the relevance threshold required to enter the auction. We do this to match customer search expectations and ensure the best customer and brand experience.

How can I evaluate my keyword performance?

See how keywords performed by downloading a Keyword report from the Create reports page in Ads Manager. Keyword Report shows the performance across all search keywords where your campaign was served, across every Ad Group. This report includes only keywords contributing impressions for a given Ad Group. We recommend advertisers use this keyword report to update and guide their keyword strategies.

Why isn't a keyword showing up in my report?

We only display keywords in the Keyword Report that have generated at least one impression.If a keyword has zero impressions, it will not appear in the report. In most cases, this means the ad was not served against that keyword during the selected date range — typically due to relevance or insufficient auction opportunity.To increase visibility, consider:Reviewing bid competitivenessEvaluating keyword relevance to your productExpanding keyword variationsWe recommend regularly downloading the Keyword Report to guide optimizations and refine your keyword strategy.

A Guide to Keyword Targeting on DoorDash

Getting Started with Keyword Targeting

This guide walks through how to use Keyword Targeting for Sponsored Products on DoorDash. It's built for advertisers using custom bidding who want more control over performance across search terms. You'll learn how keywords are matched to shopper searches, how bidding works, and how to optimize for performance.

What are keywords?

Shoppers use search terms on DoorDash to find products, categories, or brands. Advertisers can bid on keywords that match those terms so their ads appear at the moment shoppers are actively searching.

How do keywords work on DoorDash?

Advertisers can now add their own keywords to Sponsored Product custom bidding campaigns, including branded and competitor keywords. This gives advertisers more flexibility to align bidding with campaign goals and customer search intent, from protecting brand presence on key terms to expanding reach and capturing new category demand.

Step 1: Your ad becomes eligible

Ads use exact match logic for both branded and unbranded keywords. Your ads can show when a shopper searches for your exact keyword, as well as close variations such as plural forms or common misspellings helping you capture more relevant searches without needing to add multiple versions of the same term. For example, if you add the keyword “ice cream,” your ad may also appear for “icecream,” “ice creams,” or “ice crem.” When a shopper’s search matches your keyword or one of its close variations, your keyword-level bid is applied.

Beyond the keywords you selected, your ads may also appear on keywords related to your product or category. For example, if you're promoting an ice cream brand, your ads may show on "dessert" even if it was not a keyword you originally bid on. In these cases, if a search does not match a keyword with a specific bid, your default search bid is used.

For example, if your default search bid is $1 and you set a $2 bid on “ice cream,” you will bid $2 for searches like “ice cream” and its close variants, and $1 for related searches such as “dessert” or “chocolate ice cream”.

Note: Bidding on a keyword does not guarantee ad delivery. Since we consider shopper intent, eligibility for your advertised brand depends on the category your product is in, the category the keyword’s search results typically fall under, and what shoppers are most likely to engage with. For example, a soda ad would not show on a frozen foods-related search.

Step 2: Ads are ranked and enter auction

Once eligible ads are identified, DoorDash ranks them using relevance signals and bid amounts.

Relevance signals may include category alignment, brand match, prior customer purchases or interactions with your brand, and historical product engagement. Relevance matters because ads that closely match what a consumer is searching for are more likely to drive engagement and conversion.

Ads that meet the relevance threshold enter a second price auction. The highest ranked ad wins the placement, but pays only the amount needed to beat the next highest competitor. Ads are charged on a cost per click basis.

To ensure the best customer experience, DoorDash automatically filters out certain sensitive keywords in Ads Manager. While advertisers may be able to enter these terms, ads containing them will not be shown to customers.

Adding and excluding keywords

Advertisers can add keywords to campaigns under the Targeting section in campaign creation. Once Keyword targeting is selected, advertisers have the option to include keywords using the Edit button.

Note: Adding search keywords is currently excluded from automatic bidding for Sponsored Products and can't be used alongside Behavioral, Retailer, or Interest Targeting.

To add keywords, you can either paste in a list or upload a list of keywords with optional bids included using the provided .csv template. Up to 1,000 keywords may be added at a time. Bulk bid adjustments are also available, making it easy to update multiple keyword bids simultaneously.

Excluding keywords can help refine your targeting, reduce wasted spend on irrelevant searches, and improve overall campaign efficiency by ensuring your ads show only for the most relevant searches. To exclude keywords, enter the terms you want to prevent your ads from appearing on, separated by commas. Ensure your keywords are typed in correctly, as DoorDash will use exact match to prevent your ad from showing when customers type in those search terms. You can exclude up to 1,000 keywords per ad group.

Suggested Keywords

DoorDash will provide up to 30 suggested keywords based on your overall selected products. These keywords are the most relevant and have the highest sponsored impressions over the last 90 days.

Recommended keywords will change over time when the search terms that your items appear under change. This can occur if the product in your ad groups changes or if consumer shopping behavior changes.

For new products that haven't been advertised on DoorDash before, it may take up to 30 days for Ads Manager to generate suggested keywords, as these suggested keywords are surfaced based on sponsored ad impressions.

Best Practices

Consider using the DoorDash suggested keywords: These keywords have been selected based on our relevancy model and represent the top sponsored impressions for your products and ad group.
Match products in ad groups: Group like products together in an ad group to ensure relevant suggestions and keyword matching.
Focus on a theme: Bid on keywords that are relevant to the products in the ad group.
Keep it simple: DoorDash users tend to use more generic versus long tail search terms.