Promoted Listings Changes - You Must Be Joking, eBay
Summary: The discussion revolves around the topic of changes to Promoted Listings on eBay. The participants are sharing thoughts and concerns, with wara_rat highlighting a potential loophole in the system where a competitor could intentionally view another seller's ads to negatively impact their profit margins. This suggests the need for further clarification and possibly preventive measures to safeguard against such exploitation.
Email from eBay this morning.
If I read it correctly, from 24th June, if you use promoted listings and ANYBODY clicks on the ad one time...if the item then sells to ANYBODY ELSE within the next 30 days, you get charged as if the first guy bought it.
That means that if Bob in Scotland clicks an ad and doesn't buy, but Steve from Wales rolls in 29 days later and finds the item in search and buys it without clicking on a promoted listings ad, you get charged because Bob clicked it almost a month ago.
It's all well and good saying "You'll still only pay when your items sell" eBay, but that isn't the point. We pay for promoted listings in order to help find A BUYER, not a browser. If somebody comes in and buys an item organically, then the ad hasn't done its job and we're not paying for it.
We'll be removing all of our promoted listings campaigns later today, as this starts in 32 days, which is extremely underhanded. The reason being that there's a 30-day attribution window, so if Steve clicks on one of our ads this Sunday, on June 24th when Bob buys the item without clicking an advert, we'll get charged.
wara_rat
·1 month agoHmmm, so if you had an annoying competitor you could systematically view all their ads to erode profit margins...
jonatjonatjonat
·1 month agoebay do state
"While it is possible to be charged for multiple legitimate clicks from the same buyer, we have checks in place to filter out invalid clicks. If clicks on an ad are identified as invalid, you will not be charged. Note that you will also be charged if you click on your own priority ad."
no idea what those checks are though but there might be elements such as 'does the person clicking an ad sell in hte same category as that ad'
kh-federico
·5 months agoHi everyone,
This topic has been locked because the thread has become a bit dated. If you’d like to keep the conversation going or have additional questions, we encourage you to start a new topic.
Thanks!
eBay moderation
vintage-emporium-jedburgh
·7 months agoWe think With Promoted your paying to be a needle in a haystack, rather than a grain of sand on the beach
quirkyvintageandbooks
·7 months agoUnfortunately eBay are becoming as underhand as many unscrupulous users .
emsbitsandbobs
·8 months agoYep, today was our last day as a business seller on eBay. The promoted listings saga eventually killed it for us. It seems you are heavily punished, in terms of visibility, if you do not promote or even worse, if you only promote a very small percentage.
They eventually killed their own golden goose and we are seeing that with the growth of the other platforms.
Best of luck to all you other business sellers, trying to eek out a living on here.
vintage-emporium-jedburgh
·8 months agoQuite simply the added cost of promoting
makes ebay too costly for us,
ebay either gains sales cost effectively
or we dont use ebay
spei-36
·8 months agoI keep receiving messages from eBay saying:
“Your ad campaign is at risk of becoming inactive.”
I haven’t had a single sale for more than 10 days, yet eBay continues charging me £10 per day for ads and keeps sending emails asking me to increase the budget. The strange part is that they keep taking money from my bank account while there is absolutely no return — no sales, no results.
Yesterday I turned off all promoted listings, and I plan to keep them off for a couple of weeks before creating a new campaign.
To be honest, eBay is not the same platform it used to be. Years ago you could sell well without any ads, and there were plenty of buyers. Now it feels like eBay is slowly dying.
A big competitor is coming into the UK — Temu — offering extremely low fees and free ads. That’s a serious threat to eBay, and I believe if eBay doesn’t take action, they will lose even more sellers and customers.
typo_lee
·8 months agoWe were promoting at just 30%. No sales after leaving it for 4 weeks to try. Updated just yesterday to dynamic 8% and sales are flying in. It really does seem that you do have to pay to play now. Well for us anyway as we simply can't afford not to leave it 6 months with no sales coming in.
pegr-834437
·8 months agoSorry just to clarify you were promoting at 30%, then dropped to 0% for 4 weeks and no sales then dynamic and sales are back? Did you end the listings or anything and start fresh ones at any point? Have you kept the prices the same throughout?
With dynamic can you set a limit on what percentage it charges?
Sorry for all the questions by the way.
typo_lee
·8 months agoSorry that should have said 3%!
typo_lee
·8 months agoYes you can set a limit of the max your willing to pay in %. It seems dynamic work better than general campaigns for us.
typo_lee
·8 months ago3% not 30% that should have said!
strangestash
·8 months agoIs this even on internally promoted listings? i.e. a 'general' promoted listing, promoted at 2%?
nutrafituk
·8 months agoSounds great however do not put your feet up yet! Just last week we had c. 150 parcel gone MIA and they only surfaced 4-5 days later after collections over the weekend 130 miles away - the very first scan. All posted with Royal Mail and fully tracked. Now guess who gets blamed for that by eBay?
555njp
·8 months agoJust an aside but linked to visibility of listings. Occasionally I’ll send out an offer on a product that has stalled. I then regularly get a sale within 3 or 4 hours…….but for the full price?
I can only assume that when offers go out something kicks in that increases visibility to others who subsequently buy.
Very odd I know but this happens more often than not so I cannot see how it can be a coincidence?
nutrafituk
·8 months agoGot there eventually... After months of fighting back and graduall reducing the number of promoting listings we just made it big fat ZERO for the first time. If asked - best decision ever, and nerver going back to it.
The saved money has gone into our website.
louisianna
·8 months agoInteresting. What has happened to your sales as a result?
simplyessential_uk
·8 months agoI removed Promos earlier this year - for the first 3 weeks you fall off a cliff and like an addict I would go back to promos and sales would return - Then I held my nerve and by week 4 all my organic impressions returned to the same lavel as they were with Promos. I have been quiet this year but these last 6weeks Ive gone back to closing listings daliy and renewing (sell similar) and rewording titles, amend images, description etc - keeping all listings new and fresh (that arent selling) and my sales last 6wks have been fantastic. My impressions shot up as you can see 6wks ago - sales up 62% so dont be fooled that promotions are the key to increased sales - its the old fashioned nurturing of listings. If you are to drop promos the do it in January when its quiet and by Feb you will see the increase again
555njp
·8 months agoCompletely agree and this works even if like me you are a very small part-time business. Also worked on my private account.
I stopped all PLs 2 years ago. Sales fell off a cliff but gradually returned. Later that year my sales just died completely so I resorted to promoting again but it didn’t make any difference.
In November of that year I took all listings down until February then started again with freshly created templates etc. and was pleasantly surprised at how good sales were.
Yes, I still get the odd week when I seem to be invisible and a few listings that never attract a view! But that was happening even when I was promoting.
I asked a tech guy about this and he said the algorithm knows when an account promotes, so if it stops it’ll reduce visibility and sales giving the impression that you must promote in order to sell.
By de-listing everything and leaving it a few months it would appear that I was able to break the algorithmic link to my account completely as sales are now stable and fees much lower.
I certainly will never be promoting again!
simplyessential_uk
·8 months agoI asked a tech guy about this and he said the algorithm knows when an account promotes, so if it stops it’ll reduce visibility and sales giving the impression that you must promote in order to sell.
The cynical in me always thought this, that promos were money for nothing and they were removed hide the listings so sellers panic and switch promos back on, but to confirm it! wow. I know new listings get a "bump up" for first 7 days so after a month it gets closed and restarted (as new) My sales are the best they've been all year.
nutrafituk
·8 months agoObviously they went down gradually as we had stopped promoting bit by bit until all gone. To put into perspective - pretty much 6 months of decline to hit the bottom, and then slowly but surely sales started picking up. Regardless, we could not justify spending an extra £1,000 pcm in return for nothing. Unless you can afford to go big percentage and it works there is absolutely no point as everyone accepts to pay additional 2% or so...
lord_and_lady_m
·8 months agoNow is the perfect time to try in my opinion. I've switched some off and now winding the xmassy ones right down along with putting up postage. I feel done now for Xmas as any order after today will be ones that people are willing to pay for tracked postage on at which point I'm fine with that.
Gives me 2 weeks to lose my mind over all the 'wheres my order' messages and relax a bit more before Xmas.
Jan is always quiet so I don't want to encourage it to be busy as that's tax return time 😂
louisianna
·8 months agoYes, paying high % isnt an option for me as I have low price items. Im going to see how it goes without in the new year - closing today till Jan as Im sick of the where's my item messages.
Thanks for the insight!
typo_lee
·8 months agoI think its only promoted listings and forced advertising thats keeping ebay afloat. Its clear people have deserted the platform. Our impressions down 60% on same time last year and getting worst!
carrapetfoods
·8 months agoI listed an item a few weeks ago without promoting the listing. Around 3 days ago I edited the price and also attempted to send an offer to watchers. I got some sort of error message saying the offer didn't send and just left it. My item sold yesterday, to a buyer that had contacted me a couple of weeks ago and I was shocked this morning when I found a 14% promoted listing fee. I done some digging and found my ad was promoted 3 days ago - when I edited the price and attempted to send an offer.
I 100% didn't physically check any box to promote the listing. I've asked chatgpt and it seems to believe that ebay may have auto-checked the promoted listing offer when I edited the price and or attempted to send an offer.
I've spoken to ebay CS who appear to have acknowledged that I didn't knowingly promote the listing and am awaiting a call back to resolve this.
vintage-emporium-jedburgh
·8 months agoCall back? 🤣
tribalgiftsuk
·8 months agoI switched off promoted listings in June and my sales for July and August were within 5% of the previous year. So it barely made any difference at all. Its only since end September when all the budget scare mongering started that the sales have dropped badly. I have taken a few more days off than i have previously too.
So all in all i don't think the promoted listings were really giving me more sales, yes more clicks and impressions but not converting as they were probably not properly placed or it was bots or competitors clicking a lot on them.
But also my faith in Ebay has been smashed and consequently i have been putting more effort into other things that will give me a more secure income. Its such a shame, Ebay used to be my favourite selling platform and it used to be straight forward to sell on here and the delivery dates shown used to be sensible.
One too many bad moves towards sellers in the last few years and its just getting too expensive to sell on here with the increasing posting costs also.
modelrailwaysales
·8 months agoTime for honesty to come along set up a better sales platform then ebay and see how ebay collapses and dissapears. I see it coming.
potters_uk
·9 months agoHow does this affect offer acceptance. If customer A doesn't buy but customer B comes along three weeks later and does buy as the result of an offer then are you going to get charged in relation to the original price which means you will end up even more out of pocket.
Or have I got this wrong.
home-garden-furniture-shop
·9 months agoI don't think this affects offer acceptance. But if Customer A clicks on your promoted listings ad, then they effectivately activate the promoted listings fee, so even if Customer B finds you organcially, you will be charged a promoted listing ad fee thanks to Customer A clicking on it. Also, if Customer A clicks on the ad and say you charge 10%, then you lower it to 5%, the 10% is still activated for 30 days.
Hope that helps.
James
valueaddedresource
·9 months agoIt's official - this attribution model will be coming to the US and Canada in January.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Promoted-Listings-General-Attribution-Changes-Coming-To-US-amp/m-p/35329055/highlight/true#M2628543
If anyone here feels like popping over to that thread in the US community to share your experiences or any tips/strategies you've found for navigating this, I'm sure sellers there would appreciate it. 🙂
spei-36
·10 months agoThat’s completely wrong — they just want to make additional profit from our sales, which is ridiculous.
pegr-834437
·10 months agoThought I'd just drop this screengrab, I posted another another 6 weeks back showing an account that stopped all promos and relisted everything with additional item specifics and pictures. EBay then said due to them being new listings they would all start fresh and that was why they were showing so bad, that bad run went on for 10 weeks or so and the account then started 300 or so of them again but promoted with a few hundred not promoted, the process takes a few days to a week to relist everything and then to their shock organic impressions jump. So the feedback they received from eBay saying the poor impression were as suspected is clearly false as they have jumped within 2 weeks of the promo being added back on.
I don't know the exact figure but I know its low single digits, in both the low impressions and new high impressions the account has been part of an eBay funded coupon so really that shouldnt effect organic impressions. It really does seem like if you don't pay you don't play, I know eBay wont say anything on here about it though as they cant discuss accounts but the figures show if you arent promotion your organic impressions are 90% lower than if you do. I'm going to the open event with the account holder so will be interesting to see what they say to them when presented with all the evidence in person.
nutrafituk
·10 months agoGo to Performance-Traffic-Listing Views and check out your organic ones. That is what really matters.
pegr-834437
·10 months agoIts not my account so can only go off what they've told/shown me but its gone from a solid 5k a week to 6.5k 2 weeks then 8 and 9k. I know views and more importantly sold is what really matters but impressions are the first point which should lead to views then to sales and they are all lower when not promoting and then jump when promoted. That goes agaisnt what eBay have told them in emails, they blamed it on being new listings with no history yet these new listings the figures didnt drop and have grown.
nutrafituk
·10 months agoThe thing is ebay can throw any number up in the air and make it look great. It is already difficult and confusing the way the stats are shown. What we really want is to know how many organic views we get and again how many of those are turned into sales. Then any marketing decision should be made if needed.
Now it seems if you stop advertising you lose millions of views, thousands of potential transactions and so on. And that is the case however sooner or later it does come to the point when you realise that all those number do not really matter as they are not always applicable to your account as such. Conversions - sure, impressions - not really as such.
pegr-834437
·10 months agoFully agree the impressions mean very little but when you are told the drop is not down to you stop paying but starting the listings fresh it seems slightly strange that once you start paying those numbers return and views go up too. All this just organic views/impressions by the way nothing to do with promoted views.
It all just seems very unethical or maybe illegal as just this one accounts stats look to a novice like me as if you don't pay we don't show, the excuses eBay used when the numbers dropped are not backed up with any evidence from eBay and all future evidence shows the complete opposite. It'll be interesting what they say at the Open event as unlike on here or on phones they cant exactly give management words and then go silent when they are sitting opposite him.
I can't be sure on their sales as it seems a little too personal for me to ask how much you making but I'm pretty sure they've been posting more in the last few weeks than previous when they were not advertising either. Like most businesses I'm sure they dont mind paying but its the half truths and smoke and mirror stories that annoy people, be honest if you dont pay we wont show even organically as much and let people decide.
andy_multimediaman
·10 months agoI'm not sure how true this is, with regards to getting charged for promoting your item, but here goes. I was having a few drinks in the pub, and a friend of a friends friend, told me this. As soon as you click "promote my item" eBay sends a link to trained monkeys sitting in cages with laptops, and the monkey then clicks on your item, almost straight away, so no matter if you sell your item 2,3, or 4 months later, you will still be charged for promoting your item. 🤔🤔 Could be true, but I'm not sure 😂😂 have a great day 👍🏻
nutrafituk
·10 months agoWe are 60 days in, still a handful listings being promoted due to the stock nature. Results? We have over 90% of organic sales each day, savings hundreds of pounds on advertising that would make very little difference in terms of profit. The sales have come down big time but it has been over a week now since they have started picking up every day - obviously compared to the previous 30 days. It seems we are back in control now whilst launching our own website instead of pumping funds into ebay's bottomless pockets.
gardenhomeuk
·10 months ago30 days in from ending promotions and organic impressions are down 51% on previous 30 days.
juicebitz
·11 months ago***** WARNING TO ALL EBAY SELLERS USING PROMOTED LISTINGS *****
Tell me who knows this:
When you now create a Priority Campaign and that Listing ID is also in a General Campaign - you are now charged for BOTH - however, on your order/sales breakdown, you will only see the General Ad Fee Deducted. It will not show "Ad Fee Priority", so be aware, this is also deducted, but will not show on the breakdown of the order details from that sale.
It did used to have this information in the past - but now eBay are "Double Dipping" - but this is not made at all clear when you create a campaign as you go through the setup process, nor on their help pages.
I have spoken two two Concierge Advisers today, who in the last couple of months - the company did state that they "DO NOT TAKE BOTH FEES".. and resources online also validated this for me... however, keep reading because this is NOT THE CASE ANYMORE and today they both said that they DO TAKE BOTH, but you cannot see it in the breakdown on the customer order page!!!
General Campaign (or Promoted Listings Standard): This is a cost-per-sale model. You only pay a fee if a buyer clicks on your ad and then purchases that item (or a "halo" item from your store, in some cases) within a specific attribution window (often 30 days). The ad fee is a percentage of the final sale amount.
Priority Campaign (or Promoted Listings Advanced): This is a cost-per-click model. You pay every time someone clicks on your ad, regardless of whether or not they make a purchase. You set a daily budget and a bid for each click (CPC, or cost-per-click).
How they interact
When you have the same listing in both a priority campaign and a general campaign, the platforms have a clear set of rules to determine which campaign gets credit and therefore, which one you pay for.
The general rule is that the click takes precedence.
If a buyer clicks on a Priority ad for your item, you will be charged for that click, as per your Priority campaign's CPC bid. If that same buyer then purchases the item, you do not also pay the general ad fee. The sale is directly linked to the click on the Priority ad.
The opposite is also true. If a buyer clicks on a General ad and then buys the item, you are only charged the percentage-based ad fee from the General campaign. You don't pay anything for a "click" on that ad.
So, in summary: you do not pay for both. The ad fee is tied to the specific campaign that received the last click that led to the sale. You are only charged once, based on the rules of the campaign that drove the sale."
A business needs to run with integrity - be clear and transparent about what they are doing and how they wish to conduct their business, but they are clearly not doing this.
Now on their help pages they have added this information to coincide with what they are all now singing at eBay Concierge, that they CAN and DO take both the Click Fee and the General Fee - but it is as clear as mud. I am an intelligent enough person to see that this does not say, simply: "NB: If you are creating a Priority Click Campaign, when that listing also exists in a General Campaign - you will pay for the click as well as the general Ad Fee", or words to that effect.... but no, they kind of go around the houses and only mention something like this, but not clearly within FAQ Point Number 4 (see link below).
https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/listings/promoted-listings-overview?id=5295
I urge all customers to follow this up with eBay and END ALL CAMPAIGNS that exist in BOTH.
Either do one or the other and avoid huge increases in Ad Fees!
eBay is now a dirty, tarnished business in my opinion and everyone should back away from them completely and look at spending money with other platforms, or on your own website. And that is EXACTLY what we are doing.
I will be writing and complaining to eBay Head Office about this and urge all sellers to do the same, and follow up with the following:
To get results for a complaint about dishonest tactics, your best bet is to follow a formal, documented process:
Start with a formal complaint to eBay's Complaints Team (the postal address is eBay Commerce UK Ltd., 1 More London Place, London, SE1 2AF, United Kingdom).
If the complaint is about money, payments, or your account funds, escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
If the complaint is about misleading advertising, unfair terms, or deceptive business practices, escalate to Citizens Advice (who will pass it to Trading Standards).
Always keep detailed records of your correspondence, including dates, times, and any reference numbers. This will be crucial if you need to escalate your complaint to an external body.
Also it may also be worth complaining to the Competition & Markets Authority here:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/contact-the-cma
Thanks for listening and good luck.
wootton-industries
·11 months agoAs a test I have put 2 items on sponsored listing the results are:
1: No sales
2: Other sellers sponsored items also showing on my sponsored item details page.
I would have thought if you were paying for sponsored adverts, you would at least have no other sellers products advertised in your sponsored ad's details section.
What is the point in paying for sponsored ads if they are allowing or giving advertising space to other sellers products on your sponsored adverts.
designedinashed
·11 months agoBecause the impressions stats look good and your promoted listings will show on others adverts.
It's all BS manipulated numbers to make it look like your getting ROI
eBays done 3 dead days this last week shocking figures roll on OCT when i can pull the plug
gardenhomeuk
·11 months agoHas anyone been tempted to turn them back on after having them off for a while?
pegr-834437
·11 months agoGive it 2 or 3 weeks and you will get the data.
gardenhomeuk
·11 months agoStopped all promotions on 19th August, organic views dropped off as others have said, sales continue to trickle through.
auctiongabble
·11 months agoIf items that have been on inventory for some time (i mean many months) and its had the usual end / sell similar a number of times. Would there be any benefit to end old listings and create a complete new listing from scratch compared to sell similar? Timewise it will be a ball ache
Watchers mean nothing, i have many on my items, send offers out and nothing, they decline yet don't make an offer. Now switching most to BUY it now priced, still get people messaging if i would accept an offer, when i ask them to message me the offer to consider, nothing!
jlovie
·11 months agoMy understanding is Sell Similar creates a completely new listing, all it does is copy the details across to save having to type them in again. No connection to the original listing.
Sell Similar can be used with live listings, or even another user's listings, so I can't see how it can be connected to the listing being copied.
Relist has a connection to the old listing, which gets a banner something like 'the seller has relisted this item". That can help with old watchers.
Something to watch out for is obsolete item specifics, I see that quite a lot when re-jigging old listings.
eBay has a habit of changing IS unnecessarily. Way back I remember them changing vinyl speed from '33RPM' to '33 RPM' meaning all existing listings got marked as speed 'not specified' and I had to edit them all.
Every so often I seem to get a dud listing, which should be popular but gets no views in months.
Ending and sell similar sees them getting the views.
auctiongabble
·11 months agoIve always done sell similar rather than relist, probably stick with that.
I might just the a few completely new listings of items that have been dead for a while and compare results.
I have seen the obsolete item specific changes as well with some listings ive redone. Sometimes the suggested new specific is exactley the same as the old... i don't know why ebay have to meddle with things like this when there is plenty of other things for them to fix.
fatbobfan
·11 months agoThere is a thread I cant find @bojangled might be able to help, the long tips thread, its a long one but worth the read, gives imo, trusted sellers opinions on what works and what doesnt.
Its a couple of years old, the practices will be the same but the platform would have changed so make your own judgement
Ill keep looking for it, if someone else knows its title please post
fatbobfan
·11 months ago@bojangled Its been archived, sorry for wasting your time
gardenhomeuk
·11 months agoRead a lot about ''selling similar'' when ending a listing - does it matter if there are a lot of watchers - do the watches get a notification?
cobwebcottage
·11 months agoNo they don't. They will only see that the listing has ended in their watch list.
If you have quite a few watchers and have had sales on that listing, I would let it roll over as you will also lose your history. No watchers, then, end and sell similar.
pegr-834437
·11 months agoI'd love eBay to come out and actually just explain how the algorithm works, really they want us to sell as much as possible to explaining it might actually help. Everything I thought was true was basically told the opposite when I read an email from a friends account when he was speaking to an ads team manager, sell similar wipes everything off so unless you are adding new pictures and item specifics its better to keep a 90 day old listing with no sales but 3 visits than just to sell similar, or thats what he was told.
gardenhomeuk
·11 months agoAt what point (age of listing) is it best to refresh the listing though. Million dollar question I guess. Items with one or 2 sales in months and only a few views in 30 days with no watches. It is demoralising - even though pricing is comparable.
pegr-834437
·11 months agoYeah thats very true but its either have any history linked with it or none what so ever. Only found this out as a friends account dropped by 85% on organic impressions and was told that because they sell similar/ended this is the reason, they are going to the open event to make sure what they were told is true as it looks very strange.
fatbobfan
·11 months agoWould love that explanation, Dark Art get mentioned in an official video!
@gardenhomeuk approx same time, explains the process a little on what to do with sell similar, watchers/sales etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdjacpSczco
This I belive this the process and has not changed, could be wrong, perhaps mods others could correct me, kits an official Ebay vid, not a vlogger
gardenhomeuk
·11 months agointeresting. They talk in this video about ending and relisting - not selling similar.
pegr-834437
·11 months agoI haven't watched the video yet, but from everything I have been told its the same thing. I always thought sell similar kept the history but it seems it doesnt.
gardenhomeuk
·11 months agoNo, they confirmed the history goes, but that it can help with the 'best match' algorithm.
pal_version
·11 months agowatchers mean noting on eBay - the majority are people just tracking an item to see what it sells for. its almost as if they have never heard of the "sold for" search option.
don't get too hung up on impressions and watchers, its views that count. ending and sell similar will have no effect on this. eBay telling us it is no good is just BS, its more likely they don't like us doing it for some sort of admin reason they are unwilling to admit to.
eyewear247
·10 months agowatchers mean noting on eBay - the majority are people just tracking an item to see what it sells for. its almost as if they have never heard of the "sold for" search option.
Absolutely . Watchers are like trebles in darts, they look good but it the sales (doubles) that count.
A listing is said to go stagnant after 90 days without a sale and it is then that I end and sell similar.
valueaddedresource
·10 months agoThere is one in which Watchers absolutely do mean something on eBay and it's even relevant to this topic.
If someone sees the Promoted version of your item in search and clicks the heart icon to add your item to their watchlist without ever actually clicking through to the view item page, that still counts as an attributable click for ads and under this new attribution model that means if anyone ends up buying it in the next 30 days from that click, you will be charged the ad fee (assuming the item is still enrolled in an active ad campaign at the time of purchase).
eyewear247
·10 months agoBut if you end that listing with the watcher/s and then list it again as a similar item then nobody will be able to click on the original item/ listing and buy it with the associated promotional fee. If someone wants to buy that exact same item it will be on a fresh listing with a different item number and hopefully it would be an organic sale.
juicebitz
·11 months agoAnother update: Another two weeks have passed expecting with reduced Ad Rates on General Campaigns, that overall, the Advertising Costs should come down to our precisely calculated model, however, we are still over 12% out almost double in Ad Fees than we are expecting to pay, yet everything is Fixed or Dynamic + Cap Rate.
So, this is now two months in and still nothing has been sorted at eBay.
However, from the number of calls they must be getting - you can see that they have tried to explain in the Ads Dashboard what each of the 4 Areas are, and how it is calculated. Notice now, and this has ONLY JUST CHANGED within the last week. When you click on the ROAS Information Button (i), you can see that they are saying:
pegr-834437
·11 months agoI hope somebody within your company is going to the Birmingham open event as they will have either the big 'conference' style set up where they might ask for questions but certainly will have the workshops where the 'managers' from ads and the likes will be there who you can ask and have 30/40 other sellers around you giving their input too. Plus the managers will hang around a stall type set up and if you take your evidence they cant really then go nah mate thats wrong.
Also I don't want direct info but surely you have contacts within eBay thanks to your level of sales that mean you get pretty decent email addresses and you arent just wasting time talking to customer services (who try to do an incredible job but restricted) but are limited to what they can say/do from those above them.
custom-giftsuk
·11 months agoYes you can figure out what eBay are going to do next.
Its super easy.
eBay will do whatever makes eBay more money.
Whether than be SD for businesses (my own personal favourite bet) to increasing final fees.
I think they have, at the moment, kicked everyone around enough in the short term and they'll be rolling out the lessons learned in the UK to the rest of the world.
Then when they are done scooping up all that cash.... they'll get a bigger scoop.
wgwillia
·11 months agoYou can not make it up what will Ebay do next ???
gardenhomeuk
·11 months agoThis saga rumbles on, while each day affecting peoples livelihoods. Worrying reading comments above. Do we think they will listen / make changes?
vintagechinashop
·11 months agoAbsolutely not why would they. As long as the money rolls in they don’t see a problem. The thing is there will be many who vote with their feet but always some who trot along behind thinking that they actually have an advantage by promoting even though they pay through the nose for alleged said advantage
eBay 1 sellers 0
fatbobfan
·11 months agoI asked CS earlier in the year when I stopped PL standard for a refreshing period (an Ebay best practice) why did my organinc impressions drop by over 50% when I stopped PL.
They advised that shouldnt happen and they would investigate, if they did and never got back to me.
So I completely dropped PL think it was 2 weeks ago now, and the same again, 50/70%
Am I missing something? Why would organic impressions drop?
pegr-834437
·11 months agoCould be worse, dropped by 82%
fatbobfan
·11 months agoAny idea why?
pegr-834437
·11 months agoIts not mine but I know the person who the account belongs to and have seen the emails and they have asked me if it makes sense with everything eBay tells you to do at open events and even on their own pages.
In short its because they stopped promotion and ended/sell similar. eBay are saying that deletes all history linked to the item but it doesn't really match up as this person does that every 90 days no matter if the item is selling or not so really those figures should drop every 90 days.
The first 2 times they reached out to customer services (concierge level) they were told there was no change though even though the data in front of everyone proved otherwise. I can understand some of the reasoning but if what they say is true the figures should do that every 90 days and then climb back to those levels, but they never have. It seems like they do punish you for not paying but obviously cant just outright say it.
They may have done something else but just not told me but I read the full email thread so if they did I'm sure eBay would have mentioned it too.
fatbobfan
·11 months agoIt doesnt make full sense as you say but you have worded it to show that, I get you, thanks. I end/sell similar and as with your acquaintance/friends account, its not reflected.
My stats were 50k impressions when PL standard was dropped, brought them back and spiked at 300k for the first week than leveled at 100/120K plus even runng a cycle of end sell similar, never dropped near the 50K until I dropped them again
I do find it annoying on this platform when they contradict/hinder best practices. What genius created a system when doing this that impedes imressions/views/sales not only of its customer but their own revenue stream as well, why was this even allowed to happen, admittedly I dont know how to run a sales platform but I cant believe the other/ 'the worlds' selling platorms run systems that do this or have not invested/found a solution in its system that does not to hinder its own revenue streams.
They admit it will, why are they doing nothing about it? Especially when they have the big PL push going on
direct.gifts
·11 months agoLooking back to when I stopped promoted listings I can see the same thing a drop of about 50% in organic impressions.
My organic listing views are roughly the same as when I was doing promoted listings. So even though I am supposedly getting less impressions I am getting the same number of views.
Although I haven't really seen a drop in sales as a result of not doing promoted listings. I really wish it was something I had done a long time ago but got sucked into thinking it would give me additional sales which doesn't appear to be the case.
thealuminiumshop
·1 year agoThere you have it folks.
https://investors.ebayinc.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2025/eBay-Inc--Reports-Second-Quarter-2025-Results/default.aspx
pegr-834437
·1 year agoPlease correct me if I'm wrong but wont the real figures that show the change be the 3rd quarter and only the UK figures? I'm not sure if we/investor would ever just get a break down of UK advertising revenue or if its all just thrown in a big pot.
Again if I'm wrong please just shoot me down.
valueaddedresource
·1 year ago@pegr-834437 you are correct - that screenshot @thealuminiumshop posted is from the Q2 2025 report
eBay rolled out the ad attribution changes in Germany at the end of February, so those would have been reflected a little bit in Q1 and for the full Q2.
The expansion to UK, Australia, France, Italy and Spain happened at the end of June, making it effective for only a couple days in Q2 and we won't see the full impact until the Q3 report.
Unfortunately though, while eBay does break out total revenue by region/market, they don't break out ad revenue specifically that way, so while I expect there will be an increase in ad revenue in Q3 due to this change, it will be impossible to put exact numbers to how much is from the UK specifically.
pegr-834437
·1 year agoSo basically we need to wait till Q3 and Q4 to see if there has been any real change to the ad revenue and even with the data nobody will be able to see if its due to any country taking a stand as such or just that eBay have maybe had a good quarter or a bad quarter.
As a side note I know a lot of business accounts are getting free promos for either priority or promote your shop, I never knew how expensive they were for the little return, 50p per click on promote your shop is mind blowing, I'd love to know what stores can pay that per site visit and still be making profit, then the priority for 57 listings they were saying £45 a day was the suggested amount.
juicebitz
·1 year agoWe have been monitoring our PLA and PLS campaigns and have now reduced all our advertising due to these new rules.
Over the last 5 - 6 weeks, every day/week/month we analyse our data.
Our Ad Campaigns are running at ROAS 6 - 7, some higher and we set a CAP within our advertising.
Our total eBay fees should not be exceeding 32.6% even if EVERYTHING went through at the highest Ad Rate (which they are not), but every single day, not matter what - our Ad Fees have been around 12 - 13% more than we are actually seeing on each campaign in the dashboard.
We have heard the same thing from other sellers and one of them saying that she has done "nothing different" and suddenly every day she is at 45 - 52% Combined Fees compared to 28 - 30%, compared to May/June time.
We extracted the data and have shown multiple eBay concierge members this variance which is "Black & White" as far as I am concerned. Yet no-one is taking us seriously. I have now escalated this to a Complaint to see what can be done about it.
If we add all my FVF + ADS + Regulatory Operating Fees etc together, they should not exceed our "Limit" that we want to trade at.
Yet, every day they are 40 - 45% total?
The Individual Campaigns are running perfectly, yet the Ads Dashboard at the top shows a ROAS average of 4.63?? How is this even possible when every single campaign is in the 6.00 - 11.00 range? (Ok there are a couple of smaller ones, but only for about £100 of sales, which will not put a dent in the average ROAS or ACOGS when you are talking about tens of thousands of pounds in sales.
It is almost if the Ads are being charged twice somewhere - the data is skewed, the net proceeds are way below what we expect to see and yet we have more control over our Ads now than ever before being extremely cautious with the new changes.
Basically, if you Advertise - there's no such thing as an Organic Sale!!!
So, if anyone else can't fathom out why each of your campaigns show healthier figures, but the Summary at the top on the Ads Dashboard is much lower and you are then seeing this on the Seller Performance Reports (your total daily sales vs. expenses), and you wonder what the hell is going on ....
PLEASE REPORT IT TO EBAY TOO.
We have had conversations with other sellers and they are telling me the same thing, that it is impossible to see where these additional Ad Charges are coming from when clearly, even if EVERYTHING was taken at our highest Ad Rate from multiple campaigns, then it would still not even come close to what they are taking.
We honestly believe that they are double dipping, as it is roughly twice as much that is being deducted from what we have set the Ad Rates too - so now we have made my 5th observation on this and analysed everything we possibly can, the charges against what the ROAS/Ad Cap Rate should be still doesn't correlate and therefore needs investigating.
What if? (just saying), that the coder who implemented the Ad Changes, accidently put a line of code in twice and although the Ads Dashboard for each campaign shows 6 - 11 ROAS, the charges are being doubles going back to the Seller Dashboard and that's why the overall ROAS is half what we are expecting it to be.
We don't know - but what is seen in one place, is not being converted and applied correctly to the Seller Performance Dashboard, resulting in mega financial losses.
This needs sorting eBay - we are waiting to hear from you!
auctiongabble
·1 year agoYou will never win against these corporate companies. Its all about cash revenue for the business and share holders. Even the attitude and lack of suitable replies from the weekly community team says alot about the work ethics.
I don't mind paying for advertising but I will be putting my money and investing it into my own website rather than lining the pockets of these platforms.
I know it's a large investment to make but I think everyone would be better off, you will be in full control, be able to lower selling prices as you won't have ever increasing fees to pay.
goodibags
·1 year agoThis does sometimes feel like the not entirely subtle 'goal' of Ebay. i.e.
First, to have every seller migrate to a business account on Ebay.
Then, for every business account on Ebay to migrate to their own website.
bookends1
·11 months agoAnyone can build their own website or pay someone to do it. The real problem is getting people to view your website - this requires very specialist knowledge (always available at a price, with no guarantee of success). This is why eBay can get away with what it does - there is NO real competition in most categories. Only a large corporation might succeed in creating a successful alternative to eBay.
eyewear247
·11 months agothere is NO real competition in most categories.
I think Amazon might disagree with that statement
However I agree with the rest of your comment
reachelectronics
·1 year agoHas anyone noticed that it is impossible to control advertising and that it doesn't match what the dashboard says?
Since this implementation at eBay I have done nothing different and I seem to be paying 20% more than before yet I have Dynamic Rates with a CAP in place to stop it going over what I can afford.
I have brought this up with eBay and they say nothing is wrong or just argue with me telling me that "no one is forcing me to advertise with them".
I don't know what's going on but it has been like if for 5 weeks now and I am just on the verge of giving up on eBay.
Is anyone else seeing the same thing?
My Advertising Dashboard doesn't match the ROAS/ACOS to that which is shown on the Overview/Performance pages on Seller Homepage, it is as if they are taking double what they should??
Plus, I have had ZERO Organic sales now - I can't even find one!
Whatever is going on needs rectifying fast and no-one at eBay seems to care.
darth_baggins
·1 year agoThe whole point of this thread is to point out the new rule - that if ANYONE clicks on a promoted listing, then ANYONE else buys it, you get charged.
This is likely why you are seeing higher fees and no organic sales.
custom-giftsuk
·1 year agoYou are correct, no one at eBay does care. Well not about sellers, unless it's how much cash can be extracted from your pockets.
CS has been reduced to an dodgy AI that pretty much says "no" to everything and CS that just follow a script now and aren't interested in whatever is being said.
However, eBay are not alone in this. Every other ecommerce site of whatever flavour - be it e*sy, a***zon, ti**ok, etc are of the same ilk now. Increase prices and reduce services. Pretty much like any company now - look at Royal Mail for example.
Yet sellers have to go above & beyond 110% of the time, irrespective.
guymafo
·1 year ago@custom-giftsuk continued ens***ification.
GM
custom-giftsuk
·1 year agoI absolutely agree 🙂 however I think it's "doing more with less" is a polite way and we all know what that means
wootton-industries
·1 year agoI agree with your comments 100%
vintagechinashop
·1 year agoI stopped promoting and sales and views fell off a cliff. Looks like I’m slowly climbing back up as my views are up and I had a sale yesterday. It’s always quiet for me in the summer but I’m hopeful that things can only get better
pidgeun1
·1 year agoPromotions are a race to the bottom. eBay uses Fear of missing out (FOMO) to get the sellers use promotions for their items. Sellers shouldn't panic and shouldn't fall for this eBay money grab trap
stoney-racing
·1 year agoWe've had promoted listings off for most of our larger items for a month now, we experimented with a minimum 2% ad fee for a week on one shop, but it did nothing, the listings were getting barely any promoted views at 2% ad rate.
Maybe we're lucky that many of our larger items are low competition, but we've had a 45% drop across the board in ad views, ad sales and ad fees, but no drop in overall sales, July is slightly up on June. If anything I think eBay have done us a favour in showing us that the advertising we paid for previously was worthless.
When I search for some of our items with specific targeted keywords, the "competition" from the top 4-5 promoted search results are unrelated items that a buyer is never going to buy, so all eBay is doing is showing useless stuff above our organic listings, and we are generally the top of the organic listings so ours is the first useful item they see.
We do still use promoted listings for our low priced high volume stuff that has high competition, as that would drop off a cliff without promotions, but we have dropped the ad rate on those (before it was typically 9%+, now 5-7%) and now just price it in as an additional fee, so we've increased our prices slightly to include the ad fees. Again ad views, sales and fees on these items are down about 27% overall, but our total sales is still the same.
In total we are paying about 40% less ad fees and sales are the same, so eBay's greed and incompetence has perhaps done us a favour for once.
Once we've got several months of stable data to compare to, I'm going to try lowering / removing promoted listings from our high competition items on one shop, to see what difference it makes. Overall aim is to reduce / remove as much in ad fees as possible without harming sales too much.
nutrafituk
·1 year agoSo what we did was from the very first day they announced it we started removing 5 listing from our campaign. It was a no braine that all would have collapsed it unplugged in one go. No surprise we started losing views and traffic however most of it was just ebay's computing rather than real sales gone. Obviously the more we removed the higher loss was occurring. At the same timeafter 4-5 weeks in some started picking up gradually, and now we are about 30% behing previous sales however paying peanuts extra. The hope is that will only improve while carrying on with the rest of campaign totally gone soon. Interestingly, ebay kept on playing with visibilty - trying to squeeze as much as possible.
Mind you please that it can be product or category specific and have a different impact - no suggestion here there is a solution. Go through the whole Performance section and compare what it has been like at your end. There is enough information to play with and draw some conclusions.
fatbobfan
·1 year agoJust a thank you message to all those whove switched off PL and updated their results.
Interesting read
oceanartsnorthdevon
·1 year agoI have more or less switched off all PL's over the past month, as expected everything died a death apart from the odd low cost item and auction items. Quite unexpectedly on the 18/7/25 my external views shot up to 1188 and I don't partake in any other promotions including offside? As a result in this spike I sold several items that day after days of nothing, on the 19/7/25 it dropped to 776 views and I sold a couple of items that day and then the next and now back to nothing and external views have gone back to normal. Not sure what that was all about? I had been on to customer service prior about decline in sales, whether they had a hand in it or something else was happening, not quite sure as they told me to come back to them if nothing had changed and they would pass my account to be looked at. Interestingly on that same day with the spike I also had a good sale on another platform that I sell on? Did anyone else experience this last weekend?
It just goes to show it is not seasonal, competition is not a factor and my items are still saleable, the usual response when questioning why sales are down but quite apparent they are not getting seen as sales were abundant for two days with that small window of peak external views.