This is a basically a massive scam. Decided to use PPC on eBay as we do very well with PPC on Amazon. Ebay has no idea what they are doing.
To anyone who isn't sure the consolidated data across ebay refers to ad placements in the checkout, product pages and other advertising modules found across eBay. The problem is, unlike any other advertising platform worth its salt, ebay isn't able to break that down for you by each placement and then give you the option to disable the individual placements one by one (a bit like Amazon does in Campaign settings). This creates a situation whereby you run a campaign for a week to test keyword strategy and then realise half of your budget has been sucked up by something you cant drill down into, adjust and improve.
It could even be a case that eBay cannot properly attribute these clicks and so they are not showing them broken down. With Amazon the customers search term will influence the ads shown on a product page, thereby any clicks then being attributable to the keyword that triggered the ad on the product page. You wouldn't need to have any consolidated data because it would then be reported directly under the keyword. The campaign settings could then be used to turn on or off different placements across ebay.
The whole point of pay per click is that we get to pay for clicks that are likely to convert to a sale, eBay is muddying the process and making it harder to adjust and improve our campaigns.
In conclusion, If eBay wants to earn more money from advertisers then their offering should be modeled after Advertising on Amazon, the most successful PPC platform on any third party selling platform. eBays current offering is not fit for purpose.
