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 

[the_book_seekers]

Something strange with impressions and views tonight, both have suddenly shot up this evening. Impressions are up 40% on yesterday and page views up about 25%. If only this would translate into a sale or two...

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

@the_book_seekers same here - way up on the 17th, down on the 18th, across a bit on the 19th and way up again on the 20th. I dont know what good it does, the sales are still dire ... 🤔 on the other hand, for the last 3 days we've had 1 sale a day rather than 1 sale every other day - so things are looking up 🙄😣

[carinya.designs]

Our external views are up 70% yesterday and sales are literally 0

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

Just recently ebay have fiddled with "Lowest price" search.

On one of my items the first lowest item starts at around £50 !

Quite ridiculous.

This meant my £45 item no longer showed up in a "lowest price" search any more.

I had to add £5 to the price so it showed up !

Ebay is putting up the price threshold to hopefully make more money.

What they forget is ebay isnt the only place to buy items and buyers will buy elsewhere.

I suspect it will fail spectacularly as you have found.

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

@nigel_paul_wright7557  that might explain the tumbleweeds ... we have 174 listings under £50! Our most expensive item is around £20! 😣 ebay is losing out, surely? ( ... and dont call me Shirley)

[qualitycardsandgifts]

Impressions down 72%, page views down 69%, sales down 20%.    Total sales today, one - cancellation requests, one 😞

[the_book_seekers]

Yet more strangeness. On the 20th I mentioned a sudden spike in impressions and views. Four days on these spikes have disappeared from my graphs. However tonight I have further spikes with impressions up between 80 to 90% while views are up over 50%. God only knows what is going on as I'm sure ebay doesn't. 

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

I'm feeling quietly confident - Batman is in charge now! 😜🦇

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

Looks like Batman's got my back too!

[wakeson]

yea same here, impressions shot up on the 25th and sales jsut didnt exist !! 

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

Batman doesn't seem to be doing a very good job ... 😯 @oceanartsnorthdevon  and @wakeson 

[mwdirect_uk]

you must be testing again as listing impressions down 40%

on the 48% in july 

just downgraded my shop let us know when youve finish testing so we can try and get back to normal

Ebay Aplace where no one sees you 😱 

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

My impressions have steadily increased over the weeks but sales have nosedived, really odd, days with few or no sales.  All my items are promoted and I prefer to do it manually and set my own rates, I had a quick look at my current advertising campaign overview just to have a look at what ebay's "suggested promotional rates" were (far too high obviously) and noticed some of my advertising rates were showing at "0"?  I had a quick check on the listings and they were showing as being advertised at the rate I set them at, also on my current advertising campaign it was showing items that had sold and items that I ended to relist? Unsure what is going on, whether my promotions have got "stuck" as rates are set by myself and I haven't updated to their new dynamic promotions and it is causing some sort of issue?  Or whether it is something I am doing? Was hesistant to cancel whole campaign and start a new one as it has always worked fine for me in the past and don't want to upset the applecart for the few sales I get.

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

@oceanartsnorthdevon I can echo your sentiments entirely. In fact, I thought at first that I was reading my own post. On the PL overview, some of the items that I have recently ended, are still on the list with a promotion value of zero, so I dont dont why ebay hasn't just removed them from the campaign because I stopped the promotion on those individual items before I ended them 🙈 Geez, this place huh?!

Sales are down 52% on the previous month, which was about 30% down on that previous month etc etc etc. What ebay expect us to pay for PL currently stands between 11-17% which is ridiculous. They already take 34.3% in selling costs. 😫 This is unsustainable.

We're going to ride it out for Chrimbo and then we'll probably sign off for good and just sell from our website. This site is impossible to work with now. If it doesn't pick up in October and November, we may not even stay that long. Shame. We used to love it here, but 1 sale every other day is not good enough, and I dont think it's entirely due to the state of the economy.

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

The few sales that I have had recently were not sold via promoted listings but were organic or non promoted auction sales which makes me think there is something wrong with my continious on going standard campaign I set manually that has been running for several years without a hitch - that is until the update/rollout of the new promotional campaigns (advanced and dynamic).  I don't know what the answer is, whether to cancel it and start anew but that could be out of the frying pan and into the fire, I am guessing the push for the new types of advertising campaigns have run roughshot over the standard/manual promotional campaigns which may have not been updated since their focus is on the new and up to date "dynamic and advanced" promotions.  I am no IT expert and just clutching at straws for a reason why this is happening, if there have been no recent updates to the manual campaigns in hope that people make that switch and set up a new campaign to the new promotions then the old exisiting campaigns may possibly become obsolete/frozen/basically stop working/not be able to run in conjunction with the new and updated campaigns???? Have no idea really but my guess is as good as any.

[the_book_seekers]

I have never promoted but I am seeing problems with impressions and page views. The massive spike in impressions I had a few days ago has again disappeared from my graphs.  I can't say if it's a problem with the graphs or something with the recording of impressions. All I can say is it is a problem with ebay. We've had an autumn update with no mention that I can see that explains the 'experimentation' that ebay says it carried out, but have now stopped (which I doubt).

Promoted listings seems to be a tunnel without end. I see that new aspects of promoted listings have been included in the autumn update. I wonder if ebay in its efforts to persaude sellers to invest more into promoted listings will make standard promotions less effective unless you're using their (eyewatering) recommendations. 

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

@the_book_seekers - good point about the decreasing effectiveness of standard promotions. That sounds about right for ebay these days.

@oceanartsnorthdevon - sometimes you just have to change a few things in order to change a few things. I know that sounds a bit glib, but it seems to me that ebay is running rough shod over us these days, so you might as well refresh your PL campaign, as much as anything else that you might do. It just seems that nothing makes any difference any more, so I am also at a loss 🤔😟

This morning I wanted to search for a second hand book, and my usual sellers did not come up - everything at the top of the search was located in India ... *shakes head, sighs heavily, moves on*

It feels like this place is quickly turning into a real-life Twilight Zone! 😱

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

Using the standard promoted listings campaign is now like using an out of date browser or app on your phone, whilst you can still get it to work to some degree it is slow, doesn't do what you expect it to and in the end becomes so unusable you have to delete it and update.  I am guessing in the end they will do away with the standard promotions as an option and only offer the choice of dynamic or advanced so you either pay their recommendations or don't promote and disappear into the deep dark abyss.

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

@oceanartsnorthdevon agreed!

I got an email about the off-site beta testing promoted listings. It's a bit of a cheek when you think about it, to have a platform, charge people to list on the platform, AND charge people for visibility (as I said on a previous post, remind me again what listing fees are for?) , and then, charge people to pay for advertising the platform off site! It's ebay's site, they should pay for their own flippin advertising! I dont mind paying a listing fee and a final fee, but everything else is just excessive - I'm almost tempted to use the phrase 'passive extortion' - because their are no physical threats from ebay, but a hyped up fear that you'll be lost into that deep dark abyss if you don't pay up.

And just to keep the topic on impressions - it occurs to me that we cant know for sure WHERE ebay are advertising - for all I know it could be a Tibetan Monastery FB page - so impressions from there probably wont count for much in terms of transitioning from impressions to sales. 

[the_book_seekers]

In addition when you take into consideration how much more sellers on .uk pay for shops as opposed to .com, .uk must be one of the if not the most expensive sites on ebay.

ebay's efforts to exert as much influence as possible as to how we list, how much for, advertising/visibilty and postage etc moves us ever closer to an Uber scenario where we become employees of ebay.  ebay wants me to promote my listings - the only offer I've had all year is  - Try Promoted Listings Advanced and get 50% off ad fees (up to a max of £100 which wouldn't last long) and which I've ignored.  ebay is also trying to get me to - Offer free delivery to help increase your visibility and salesOffer free delivery to help increase your visibility and sales. It’ll help you qualify for the ‘Free in 1-3 day’ badge, making your listings more visible to help boost your sales (although I've noticed this banner has previously said that if I offered Free delivery it could lift my sales by up to 7% which has now been removed).  This I've also resisted because of ebay's EDDs - if I offered this the way ebay's EDDs work my service metrics would be out the window in an instant. Personally speaking it is the toughest enviroment I've seen on ebay for many a year.