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.

[cobwebcottage]

'Basically, you HAVE to compete'.

No you don't. It's a choice. I have both a Business and Private account and have never used PL. I sometimes run coupons on my business account but that is managed by me and not by clicks.

[fatbobfan]

For those dropping PL standard, heres my current CS service investigation still not resolved, photo below

Preached to me by Ebay since year dot, Impressions=Clicks, Clicks=Sales

You can see my PL impressions with a high Organic rate 50/60k impressions with 20/30k Promoted on top

Look what happens for the weeks with no PL a steady 8/12k (Dark blue only)

Why does my organic immpression drop from 50/60k to 10k when I dont promote? And increase to 50/60K when I return PL? CS advisors (2) have confirmed this is not correct there is an issue, as per the norm, no ones got back to me. 

 

I had faith in the CS agents with an indepth conversation, any posters with an explantion/theory please give, gratefully received. For those cancelling PL whatch you stats, and I kindly ask you share your results

I did mention the word surpressed... and was told this was definitely not the case. To me it looks like it

[goodibags]

You definitely have to compete IF you want to sell. Like I said, there's no point wasting your time listing stuff if you didn't.

Unless there is NO competition, of course. If your items are very rare you may just get away with charging whatever you want.

[wezmoto]

Well written, I was just about to type the same comments. 

Where the heck else does "pay per click" not equal a click ?

So if a buyer comes to ebay under recommendation from a previous customer and actively searches for your item, (nothing at all to do with any other items for sale), you still pay if someone who didn't buy, clicked on it at some time in last 30 days.

I for one will be cancelling promoted listings campaigns as soon as this is live. 

eBay are literally taking the mick out of us.

Spend the money instead on a low cost google or facebook campaign, and you never know, the buyers might find your website instead with zero fees to be paid.

[wezmoto]

If you really wanted to be awful, nothing stopping anyone asking AI to write them a robot which will continuously browse an ebay usernames items for sale and click on them.

A very simple way to ruin your competitor ?

[snowylad2012]

How the OP describes it is exactly how I read it!   So yes promoted listings being turned off tonight and will probably close  my shop as not making any sales anyway!! 

[bloodknock]

More gobbledegook from Ebay to confuse sellers and steal a little extra money. Will stop using it.  

[fashionista27]

With people moving away from the auction model, many resellers and casual sellers unsure of the value of their items, researching similar items became a norm. My promited listings are turned off for good.

[difficult2find]

I have just paused all my promotions. There is no justification for this change, they may as well stopped providing the feature. I registered my complaint as well.

I need to do a price comparison vs amazon now, this will decimate my sales but I would rather spend that percentage in other ventures. I don't understand, this is a symbiotic relationship, I produce goods that ebay helps me sell and they take a healthy percentage for putting those products in front of their large customer base. Now we both lose.

[fashionista27]

So promoted ads will become a lottery where the likelihood of your item being clicked entirely by genuine buyers is less likely than being hit by a lighting stroke. I'd rather sent offers, lowered prices or tested other platforms. More money in my pocket.

[my1-uk]

I too will be switching promotions off.

Already stopped selling abroad and to Northern Ireland.

Their seller protection is non existent, and no action against businesses blatantly selling as private sellers.

I'm seriously considering totally giving up on ebay.

[difficult2find]

I also wanted to address those saying their products are suppressed. I sell 50 different products that are custom made. I routinely sell things in batches despite my listings all being part of the same promotion. This means I could sell 3 or 4 Dell racks in the space of a day or so then they will stop selling and maybe a mount for a 16 port switch will start selling. Then that will stop and another product will. It's clear some sort of flawed algorithm is at play, out of the 50 products I will rarely sell a healthy mix of products, it'll always be a batch of one particular one. This is a change in behaviour from two years ago when I sold a much broader mix of products at a fairly constant rate. Overall sales are the same but I can't help but think they could be better!

[tub-at-home]

Good for you, but I bet you won't get any views. I'm a private seller & views have gone down dramatically since seller protection, some items never ever get any views, I never had this years ago before they started tinkering. I sometimes do promoted but will not now.

[emsbitsandbobs]

Do many of you use the "Sell Similar" function? I do quite often, which means I have to click the item. If that was promoted, even though I would never be the buyer of said item, the seller will now be charged a fee if it sells within 30 days. I also click similar listings to see how they worded their descriptions, to see if there are any extras with their items that may affect they price point they have chosen, the condition compared to mine. Etc etc.

There are many reasons people might click an eBay ad. and have no intention to buy, but eBay are now going to use that as an excuse to make sure you pay the Promoted fee if it sells within 30 days of making that click, regardless of whether their promotion actually did anything or not. 

I would also like to know if when the implementation goes ahead in June, will it only count for listing that are being promoted or listed after that, or will it start counting on any promoted listings that have been active in the 30 days prior?

[tub-at-home]

Oh wow, I never thought of that, I do sell similar all the time, will stop
that now.

[ett1954]

"I don't understand, this is a symbiotic relationship" - Unfortunately this relationship stopped being symbiotic some years ago and has now transitioned into a parasitic relationship.  We know how that ends - the parasite (platform) eventually will kill the host (seller).

[bravergrace]

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@therenewalworkshopltd wrote:

I am curious though, if your not logged into Ebay and you click on something, does that count?

And if it does, then how can Ebay monitor that kind of thing or even stop it from happening?

If you were trying to be malicious, it's fairly easy to disguise your location and such like, which again means it's very easy to abuse.

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More to the point, what incentive does eBay have for monitoring or stopping this behaviour?  Suppose I click on Jane's brand new tiger lily listing, and Jane then sells the item to someone else.  Jane pays eBay the usual commission plus the promoted listing fee.  Why should eBay seek to punish me?  I've just earned eBay some money.

eBay aren't going to spend good money trying to work out whether I was thinking of buying the item .  They can't even know whether I had noticed - at the time of clicking - that it was a promoted listing.

More to the point, are they going to have any incentive to stop their own staff from doing some extra clicking?  Because some of their staff clearly have targets based on the amount of promoted listing income they generate.

[pidgeun1]

@emsbitsandbobs you have to end your promotions now to escape the fees starting in June. eBay is deceptive as usual to grab money from naive sellers

[pidgeun1]

@wezmoto  you have to end your promotions now to escape the fees starting in June. eBay is deceptive as usual to grab as much money from naive sellers 

[greatgiftshampshire]

well sorry, but yes,

exactly as stated by myself, when looking at the facts the advisor had to agree and even said she would expect a lot of fall out from this once she herself looked at the email we have all received , my complaint was logged and I would advise all sellers to do the same and log a complaint , 

at the end of the day who do we complain to ?? seller support, so seller support are the ones getting it in the ear from us all , so to be understanding and to see for themselves what's going on and not patronise the customer by using empathy as you put it, with an issue that can not be resolved without logging a complaint ,

sorry but do you think I made it up or something ?? do me a favour !!