EBay NOT for Independent sellers anymore

[mybrandoutlet*]

EBay paid ads has truely ruined eBay for the independent retailer/etailer.

The likes of Sports Direct, large charities etc sell through their own eBay stores therefore they have the marketing budgets to buy the end customers sales. Through a variety of sponsored ads. Having worked for large global brands for many years, working with all etailer's and market places in the main from the start of the ecom boom... it is a shame to see eBay sell out by creating an unfair controlled monopoly over the end consumers choice.  Sponsored ads should be illegal as they restrict the customers choice, dictating to the customer what they should buy. In the US the government are currently on the tails of Google for creating such monopolies and removing the choice for the consumer.

[kempseykate]

As a buyer I never search by Best Match, the other options (price etc) don't have sponsored ads at the top. I also never look at them on listings. If people want to waste money on them, that's their prerogative - I just don't have to look at them.

[pillarboxred]

I think that the legal problem could be with Search. When you type a Search term, you are not warned that the Returns will be conditioned by who has paid for better placement. You might have composed a carefully tailored keyword Search but it will be corrupted by paid placements. I am using Promoted listings but it is hard to say whether they work so they might not be good for buyers or sellers.

[pillarboxred]

Interesting. EBay claims the Promoted listings do do better but whether it is worth paying say, £1.90, to promote a vase which makes £11.50, I don't know.

[theelench]

It might be worth it if a seller has a pallet load of the vases so possibly sell multiple vases off the back of their £1.90.  But it certainly isn't worth it for a vintage, one off collectable vase at £11.50.

It's particularly galling that if the search actually worked as a search and wasn't so manipulated and rigged so that anything not promoted is now quite unlikely to sell, it would have stood a good chance of selling and making both ebay and the seller some cash without any need of promoting. 

[mybrandoutlet*]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

1.  Paying upto the 12% recommended by eBay errodes margin in an already discounted market, also there is no guarentee that when you pay the additional marketing fees that the listings you apply the marketing budget too will be at the top of the search, if another brand or business has a larger cash marketing budget and higher PPC budget, then you'll never gain the sale.

2. Over the years I have worked on hundreds of complex, Google ads, Amazon

and now Ebay ads key word search marketing initiatives for brands, products etc.  In the past these were worth doing and benefits were seen through selling volume and increasing cash revenue.  However, increasingly over the last 5 or so years the paid ads only benefit the search engine/ selling platform. This has been demonstrated when reviewing turnover,  margin etc VS marketing expenditure. A great example is that CK 3 pack black boxer, when searched for in Google ultimately costs the retailer around £10-£14 for the sale.
Amazon marketing is more cost effective to manage, however lots of business with upto £2m turnover that I have worked with have pulled away from key word based marketing, basing their strategies on price reduction and efficient service matrix. To win the customers sale etc.

3. When monitoring my own store's impressions then views, the same amount of listings as the months and year prior are showing a reduction of over half the impressions and views, therefore drastically reducing sales as the customer is mainly seeing sponsored ads. Hense this reduces customer freedom of choice and ultimately ebay is controlling the customers sales.

The US Justice department are currently trying to fight for change against Google ads, around the control of the ai technology that results in the search engines monopolising customer freedom of choice.

If this was all above board an legal this case would not be seeing the light of day.

[theelench]

I'm not sure if this is relevant or not but your comments would interest me.

I also sell on another site, famous for not advertising itself, but which does upload ads. to google shopping.  I don't do Promoted listings here (the other site doesn't sell them) and I don't pay anything to google and only a listing fee to the other site.

Wondering where may sales there come from I began taking more interest in GS, how many of my ads. were visible.  How many of my ads. were uploaded, but not visible unless I used the side-bar filters and generally trying to get more of my ads. to be visible by paying attention to GS recommendations.

Yes, I can now always see a few of my items on the first three pages of results for my "Art Deco Glass" search.  When I'm included on the filter bar, ticking the box I'm shown more of my ads. but I can't find them on lower pages.

GS seems to reserve the first 2/3 pages of results for smaller sites and independent web-sites and shows very few ads. from the "Big Three" on them.  After the first few pages, ebay and etsy ads. take over with pages of ads. and virtually no other smaller sites or one-man web-sites to be seen.

Another seller maintains that what I'm seeing is due (mainly) to GS manipulating the results I see because it has 'noticed' my disinterest in the larger sites and that I mostly view items from smaller sites.

I've had some success verifying that what I'm shown is also seen by others and from library computers, but not enough to be conclusive.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

[f4yesaccount]

Problem is sales drop to insignificance without paying for rank in best match. 

[mybrandoutlet*]

Hi,

Thanks, thinking of a few different things here:

1. In respect to Google Ads, the way in which the algorithms mainly work for keyword search is by popularity of the search term (stating the obvious here). So any organisation can access the keyword data through Google Ads, or other apps (paid for). The data would show how many people in any set time period have searched for a particular key word on Google.

For Art Deco Glass, when researching how their campaigns should be formed I would guess that if the larger retailers are not showing on Google then this could not be deemed as a popular search term. Therefore does not have the budget allocated to bid for the PPC.

Which is great for independent sellers selling these sorts of niche products, they are not necessary mail stream enough for the big boys to focus their efforts on.

2. Another factor could be that as EBay as are other sites are still vastly used for Vintage and second hand items, so when you are searching on EBay, Art Deco Glass could be a more popular search term than on Google itself as I am guessing that as well as new styles items, the vintage market would be awash with such items. What is a popular search term on Google doesn't nessecarily always reflect the same on the market places. 

3. Just to mention that for a brand or specific product key word campaign, hundreds-thousands of terms are used for a single campaign.  Based on the research mentionned above.  So if an independent seller is just looking at spending money on 10-50 search terms, they may as well not bother. Unless a completely unique or trademarked product is being sold.

4. I don't think that the 'disinterest' would be correct... as the paids ads are always based on the search term not end the consumer choice of site preference. More likely reflective of point 1.

5. Just looking at another comment, yes if you don't pay for ads the items appear lower in search, however even if you do, of the most they will appear lower in search unless you have the highest bid for the PPC for the particular search term. 

Again going back to the CK reference earlier. You would need to pay this amount to win the customers search entry on Google... and be top of the search page. Then loosing all of the profit on the item.

Again for niche products this would work differently.