Impressions broken again??

[swiss_expert_uk]

Can you please check if there is another problem with impressions? Another counting glitch? These stats can not be correct. Organic impressions promoted views down to under 3000 views today at time of writing. This time last week almost 73000 views. Please help.  dave@ebay kat@ebay 

[simplyessential_uk]

I used PL at 2% and refuse to go higher as it is an "opting in" and when I have trialled 5% it makes no difference and Im lucky if Im making 10% profit as it is on some items anyway.  I will not use Dynamic that is pointless and might as well throw money down the drain same as google PPC.   What I have worked out is 1 sale = More sales on a listing so if I can get that 1 sale for a poor listing in the bag then I find more follow - the algorithm Gods look favourably on me so Id rather reduce a price than pay more %DL.  Seriously though I think if it sees it selling then it puts it infront of ppl searching the same thing.  What really annoys me is when I then sell out and think wow Im getting more of them....a week later its dead - no one is buying said thing so I know I have then lost the momentum and restart, I know its not possible that I can sell the same thing day after day then a week later zero of the same item.  Its all trial and error

[goingfishinguk]

A brief example of how wholly ineffective eBay advertising is...

Yesterday... Standard Dynamic (Remember eBay claim to shift adverts more effectively to sell more, that is their 'advertsing' tag line for the adverts)... 203,152 impressions, 198 clicks.  That is less than 0.1% of people who see one of my adverts yesterday actually clicked on them.  The actual sales rate is less.  How on Earth can any company say their 'system' is running as it should with a less than 0.1% success rate?

Advanced Smart was 13,124 impressions yesterday with 83 clicks which is approx 0.65% and of course even less in sales.  So for a much higher % in advertising fees you are not get the same % increase in clicks and certainly nowhere near in sales.  It's a scam.. simple.

[simplyessential_uk]

Thats why i wont use Advanced, dynamic or whatever its called. Just like googles PPC you teally have to set it manually to put in specific keywords or youre wasting your money,but even then the costs are ridiculous wanting £1 pc on main keywords and thats just to click on not a fvf so its v expensive with little reward 

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Impressions up strongly today, page views lower than often, anyone else seeing this ??

Thanks.

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

Yes  I noticed sharp increase in impressions yesterday but not reflected in sales.

[goingfishinguk]

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@oceanartsnorthdevon wrote:

Yes  I noticed sharp increase in impressions yesterday but not reflected in sales.

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Not for me, however I pay very little attention to 'Impressions' as they are a pointless piece of data which is so easy for eBay to manipulate and impossible for us to prove.  What do they actually mean?

I posted a couple of days ago I had had 190,000 impressions on a given day, all that is is how many times one of my promoted listings have appeared on the eBay sites.  Nothing more.  However  the clicks aspect of it which was around the 180 mark.  So for all those 190k adverts posted only 0.1% of people actually clicked on one... and even less bought something.  The promoted listings advanced/promoted display variations are even less efficient.   You are paying for something which is less than 1% effective, do your own maths.  Would you buy a car that only worked for 3 days a year?

I think it's time people took a good hard look at the data we are constantly fed and read more into it.  It's totally inefficient.  I've watched all the videos.  Which in a nutshell tell me to offer more money off on items, offer more coupons - coupons!!!  Are we in America??? Offer more sales, offer multi buy and increase my % for promotions.  To sum up give more and more away to eBay and take less and less profit.

Would eBay like it if we went to them and told them to reduce the dividends to stockholders and give something back to the sellers like 6 months free shops or 10% of FVF?  They'd go nuts but that seems to be their business model.

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

@goingfishinguk  👏👏👏👏 spot on!

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

My impressions continue to be very very high, both organic and promoted however page views are very poor in comparison to the previous balance of the two.

Is this situation still widespread ?

[wearenowclosedthankyou]

I think we have established the reason for this......

I see ads for things not relevant to my searches all the time.

Our promoted listings are shown all over the place but not to relevant searches or item matches 🤔 which raises the impressions highly but as they are not wanted by the buyers who are looking at/for something completely different.... the impression is wasted. Hence sell through drops through the floor 🙄

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Thank you for your reply.

My organic impressions are through the roof as well though so it's not just related to promoted listings, my organic impressions are often 50 - 100% higher than where they generally were.

[goingfishinguk]

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@british-ceramics-and-paintings wrote:

My organic impressions are through the roof as well though so it's not just related to promoted listings, my organic impressions are often 50 - 100% higher than where they generally were.

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Can you check what your actual 'clicks' are on your standard promoted listings?  Like I said above mine seem to run at 200 clicks per 200,000 impressions which is a 0.1% success rate.  I can't think of anything less efficient that I have encountered than that.  Yes 1/10th of 1%.  Can you imagine the big wigs sitting around the corporate table and saying we are going to implement this new feature it will have a success rate of 0.1%.  The investors would pack up and leave by the dozen but that is what we are sold by eBay.

Of course that is just clicks on our adverts, the actual sales conversion rate in my case is a lot less of that 0.1%  So out of those 200 people who click on those adverts I'm lucky if 10 of them buy something.  Again if the shoe was on the other foot try selling that to the potential investors... it's a complete joke but people are sucked in, mainly out of desperation and hike their advertising rates up and up to catch a sale.

Another illustration on how out of step these advertising campaigns are on Amazon the computer suggested to me to increase my daily spend to £95 because I was missing out on a potential £45 to £65 of sales. It even said in brackets 'potential not a guarantee.'  Why on Earth would I spend £95 to 'potentially' get back say £55?  It's bonkers, but many many people fall for it as all they are concerned about is the number in the sales box.

[the-nutwood-collection]

Is this situation still widespread ?

I stopped looking at the performance statistics ages ago.  I used to record them on a spreadsheet on a monthly basis, but I found that the numbers changed - the impressions I'd recorded for the previous month were different the following month - sometimes dramatically different.  Also the calculation for the +/- % comparision with the previous month was wrong.  Obviously whoever coded it had only a shaky grasp of how to calculate a percentage difference.

Prompted by this thread, I took a look at my performance.  It seems that my listing impressions are up 18.4% on the previous period (Wow!!!!), the CTR is down 0.2% and the listing page views down 2.1%.  This leads me to believe that my listings are being promoted on (as another seller has said) the Facebook page of a Buddhist monastery. 

I'm not surprised.  My saved search for early 20th century postcards now returns horror DVDs (mainly Battle Los Angeles) and midwifery textbooks.  There's a lot of Battle Los Angeles DVDs for sale.  Every day I see Battle Los Angeles - no postcards, just that **** DVD.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

My impressions have normalised again.

They were very high for a few weeks although they were not translating into page views or sales.

Is anyone else seeing the same ?

[goingfishinguk]

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@british-ceramics-and-paintings wrote:

My impressions have normalised again.

They were very high for a few weeks although they were not translating into page views or sales.

Is anyone else seeing the same ?

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May I ask what your CTR is?  I've asked about this on the promoted listings forums but got no reply.  For me impressions are nonsense, I've mentioned loads of times 200,000 a day with only 190 clicks, that is 0.1% or put it the other way 99.9% inefficient.  No matter what I do my CTR never budges so that is more evidence for me that 1) my account is capped and 2) eBay's advertising is wholly inefficient.  Thanks.

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

Our CTR is 0.09%  - couldn't be more pathetic really. I've gone past caring, it's all a bunch of nonsense. We're 6 weeks away from Christmas, and we're still only getting 1 or 2 sales a day. What is THAT all about?! We're definitely chucking in the towel at December - what's the point?

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Hi,

My C T R is currently 0.2%.

[typo_lee]

Our click through rate always stays the same so it's clear eBay cap your sales

[the_book_seekers]

ebay has placed a banner on my traffic page admitting there is a problem and historical data may be incorrect. Last night I had a spike in views of roughly 50% above average. What is the point of all these pages of data if they can't be trusted. 

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Impressions are well down today, around 40 - 60% lower than where I would expect them to be for a normal Sunday.

19th November, this should be a very business day for traffic on Ebay.

[typo_lee]

Our impressions are normal today. Apart from it being a very quiet Christmas rush this year as it is everywhere