Promoted Listings Changes - You Must Be Joking, eBay

[superchallenge]

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.

[blueskystore777]

If ebay aren't making enough money from PL anymore, it might have been a better decision to make PL more attractive to use rather than less!

[q12345678900]

Turn promotions off. Turn them all off.

[piercingmania]

So instead of making the site more user friendly and most importantly cheaper to use, they decided to milk the sellers even more and alienate even more users and that come on top of the all recent miscalculated changes which wiped out plenty of private sellers (and many buyers). Wow...

[darth_baggins]

What a joke. I honestly thought I'd misunderstood. eBay seem determined to fleece sellers out of every penny without actually doing anything to help us.

I'll be switching mine off. It's a blatant cash grab.

[susanddave]

I read it the same - although i don't think it's new, feel like they have been doing this all along. I don't promote anything any more - it is just a way for ebay to make more money off all of us.

[superchallenge]

Yep, it is. Mine have been turned off now. 

I don't mind paying if the ad leads directly (or indirectly, even) to a sale. But this is utter nonsense.

[palison_123]

If you are correct its one of the most outrageous  money grabbing schemes they have ever done .

As businesses we are already paying through the nose especially compared to "private sellers" .

So basically are they saying , if you promote an item  we pay an ad fee for every item sold regardless of how they came across it ?

[superchallenge]

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@susanddave wrote:

I read it the same - although i don't think it's new, feel like they have been doing this all along. I don't promote anything any more - it is just a way for ebay to make more money off all of us.

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The majority of my sales don't get the promoted listings charge and all of my items are promoted, so I wouldn't say they've been doing it all along.

But they certainly are gonna be doing it now!

[jlovie]

They're basically saying pay us at least 2% of every sale or we'll hide your listings.

What's the betting that the next move will be to raise the minimum 2%.

[darth_baggins]

Seems to me that's exactly what it says

The ad fee is charged when a buyer purchases the promoted item from a general ad that any buyer clicked on in the most recent 30 days. The item must be promoted at the time of click and the time of sale. The ad fee is based on the ad rate in effect at the time of the sale.

So basically if ANYONE clicks an add, then someone else buys it, you get charged regardless.

Nope. Not doing that.

Also, this is massively open to abuse by competitors. Just go on a rival seller's listings and click on them all so the seller pays more ad fees.

[superchallenge]

If anybody (not just the eventual buyer, but anybody at all) has ever clicked on the promoted version of the listing within the last 30 days, yes.

[blueskystore777]

Yes but just possibly it will result in killing off PL completely and eventually we end up going back to a 'classic' ebay search.

Ebay can go one of 2 ways,

1. let it go bust. 

2. Back down on all the stupid decisions, reinstate a simple 'classic' market place with a simple and fair fee structure for all sellers and watch vast hoards come back to the platform and the share price rockets.

[theelench]

You should have paid more attention to the last two quarters results instead of being rude to complaining private sellers.

The increase in Sponsorship revenue has been slowing.

After losing another swathe of private sellers, you can expect more increases next quarter and possibly SD For Business as well.

Gotta keep the shareholders happy !!

[angela-sells-stuff]

Epic! What executive magic'd up this latest MessUp!  I'm an avid promoter, constantly on the percentages & currently running a dynamic campaign, throwing up to 22% at it. It works great for me, but today I am just going to delete the campaign.  I add new items to my current campaign on the listings day 7, but I've noticed that Good 'Til Cancelled listings that renew in the gap between campaigns, all relist and automatically make  a new individual campaign for each relisted Good 'Til Cancelled listing. So, if my promotion campaign has finished and I've yet to start a new one... all those listings that have automatically renewed now each have their own promoted campaign. 

[superchallenge]

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@theelench wrote:

You should have paid more attention to the last two quarters results instead of being rude to complaining private sellers.

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And you should realise that saying "you're a business trading as a private seller" when they are clearly a business trading as a private seller is not "being rude."

Also, some of us are able to do more than one thing in a day.

[annemann-2009]

Agreed. I'm a private seller, next stuff I list, I'm going to experiment and list with zero ads and track it for views etc. I think the new plan is part lawyer style double speak too.

[angry-space-triangles]

I've "paused" all my promoted listings - we'll see how it affects sales over the next week or two.  

I am disgusted by this change - it is TOTAL NONSESE. If person A clicks on something then they deem the advert to have been successful, so then when person B, C D and E buys the item over the next 30 days via doing a search like in the good old days, they charge you an Ad fee on each sale?   This is absolute lunacy.  

[smarts-gaming]

Read the room ebay.... blimey. 

One day ebay will be studied on business courses as an example of how to destroy a multi million pound business. 

I can only imagine they must still be thriving in the States, because their share price is somehow still going up?? It makes no sense to me, I think they are fiddling their investors as well. 

[palison_123]

@superchallenge 

"If anybody (not just the eventual buyer, but anybody at all) has ever clicked on the promoted version of the listing within the last 30 days, yes."

No thats how it is now .

What this says is that they don`t even have to click on the ad and we will be charged .

Its effective a percentage increase across the board if you promote an item and because it last 30 days from one person clicking on an item, it effectively lasts forever.-or until you stop promoting it will stop 30 days after that point .