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.

[charmkeyrings]

I thought being self-employed would remove me from the rat race. I was clearly wrong and it was just a dream. There's a saying I like from 30 years ago plus when I worked in corporate. "If you must swim with sharks, you'd better be one". Nothing has changed and never will. No point complaining that things aren't fair. That's by design :-). Im off to take care of business (myself I mean) all the best.

[theelench]

If I remember rightly, five years ago we were in lock-down due to Covid.  At about that time ebay issued some sort of press statement saying that it was booming, with thousands of businesses signing-up because their B&M operations were closed and even more thousands of private sellers clearing their clutter or trying to make ends meet and having ample spare time to list as they were trapped indoors.

Hence a spike in sellers, listings, sales and the share price,  but 2020 was a blip.  Remove it and ebay's share price has hardly changed over the previous 6-7 years.  In fact I think that if you look back over the past 10 years or so ebay's share price fell between 10 and 5 years ago, was helped by Covid in 2020 and hasn't moved much since.  Not because it's holding its own in the market-place, whether from sales or Ad. fees, but because ebay seems to be ploughing profits into dividend payments and buying back its own shares to prop-up the price.

IMO it's like a lot of things ebay, smoke and mirrors and IMO not a good way to run a business to keep the share price artificially and unjustifiably high by using profits that would be better spent innovating, genuinely improving the company and even fostering loyalty in customers and buyers by giving back in the form of fee reductions or financing buyer give-aways like vouchers to those buying on the site. 

[charmkeyrings]

Very eloquently put. Unfortunately it's 2025 and we're in "like it or sod off"  teritory.  Make the best of a bad job would be my way forward for now.

[vinylscot]

You state "USB cables are dropping, phone cases, wallets, purses, card holders.... lots of sectors declining heavily. " To be fair, these  "sectors" are dead for a reason. Nobody needs so many USB cables, as they are far more standardised now; phone cases was obviously a temporary fad; wallets, purses and card holders are all suffering as so many include facilities for AirTags, which never really took off here.

However, there is no denying that traffic to eBay.co.uk has dropped alarmingly, approximately 10% in the last month alone (adjusting for 31 days in May, and only 30 in April) - link below. This is unsustainable in the longer term, and eBay will need to react. I suspect it's much more due to the recent changes which have already been implemented, rather than a genuine decline in purchasing. People will still be buying, but possibly more are now buying elsewhere.

https://ahrefs.com/websites/ebay.co.uk 

[custom-giftsuk]

Amzn, ety are both showing drops. The only place I can see is increasing is the Chinese/Singapore apps.

[custom-giftsuk]

With any saturated and fully mature market like the UK, if a new platform comes up, its going to take segment share away from existing platforms and we've seen that in droves lately with the Chinese/Singapore apps unless those platforms are niche, for things for example like 2nd hand clothes.

[charmkeyrings]

Just to be clear.  This update really did irritate me.  I still don't have a problem with eBay.  There are 101 new ways they could fleece us futher.  The amateurs they hire haven't thought of them yet 🙂

[theelench]

Luckily I'm not trying to earn a living on here so, as I don't like what ebay has become, I'm happy to take the "Sod Off" option.

What a relief it is, like a grey cloud lifting and some sunshine coming through.  I did a leisurely listing elsewhere this morning, but it still took less time than here.  No silly delivery dates to look forward to, no payment hold when it sells and best of all no more sodding about refreshing listings to suit ebays warped search engine.  With paypal instant payment as a reward, as if 5% FVF wasn't enough. 

Yet strangely, or perhaps not so strange, I'll probably sell more there than I have on ebay these past few years.  I've already sold as many items there this year as I did on ebay all last year and this year has been my worst year for several on that site.

All I've got to do now is break the morbidly fascinating habit I've developed recently of being drawn back here just to see how ebay is making itself worse with every change it makes.

[charmkeyrings]

I have to ask.  If you were unhappy then why did you put up with it for so long? 

[charmkeyrings]

I got irritated about this update, hense I posted. Very niave of me. On reflection, and for a global corportate, this cash grab is nothing. Just work around it. Again, all the best.

[pillarboxred]

I've been paying for Promoted and starting most things at 99p no reserve and that's what they've been making AND EBAY TAKES THE PROMO FEES.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Sorry, but why would you be promoting auctions?  They come to the top of search as the time gets shorter anyway.

[theelench]

---

@charmkeyrings wrote:

I have to ask.  If you were unhappy then why did you put up with it for so long? 

---

Basically because for years ebay was clever enough to keep the level of 'carrot' in the shape of FVF offers / free listings and most importantly sales, high enough to outweigh the amount of 'stick' I increasingly felt I had to 'put up with' to get them.  

So despite the numbers of my sales falling Y on Y, over more years than I care to remember, I could always feel that there might be light at the end of the tunnel and the increasing effort would pay-off at some point.  Even when it became clear that ebay's plans were leaning ever further towards a 'look after businesses and let everyone else survive as best they can' approach.  It was still possible to think there might be some 'trickle down' or 'ripple' effect, allowing everyone else to sell enough to make it worthwhile. 

That illusion was finally dispelled once the push towards Promoted Listings got under way.  My last four full years selling on ebay (listing about 50 different items p.a) produced respectively,  20+ sales (acceptable) - 13 sales - 13 sales (tolerable) and finally 4 sales, (un-acceptable) for the amount of effort required to get them.

With the growing disenchantment of increased use of payment Holds on various pretexts. The removal of collectables categories / introduction of IS, which made searching increasingly frustrating for me as a buyer, so I could understand why my buyers were not buying any longer.  The idiocy and intransigence of ebay's insistence that EDDs, with their impossible delivery dates, were working perfectly increased the feeling that private sellers were being set-up to fail and my feeling of "What's the point" grew.

I'd more or less decided to stop selling at the end of last year and my final listing finished (unsold) about a week before "Free" to Sell was announced, so I spared myself the bother of trying to come to terms with BPF and SD.  Which, even if I was thinking of continuing this year, would have been enough to change my mind, without any of what had gone before.

BTW.  I was reading a thread here where someone posted some evidence of why it's so difficult to get buyers or sellers to return to a business, once they have left.  It's interesting reading and I recommend it to you all, if you can find it.

Briefly, it explains my experience better than I can (and probably the feelings of many others).  Rolling back on whatever was 'the final straw' is not enough (let alone just a few concessions to soften the blow).  The accumulated 'bad feelings' and negativity that grew over the previous years have to be dispelled as well, before trying again.  It might explain why, despite ebays years of continuous 'improvements' buyers, sellers and sales continue to fall and having fallen, never really recover in any meaningful sense.

Good luck to you all !

[custom-giftsuk]

eBay will not roll back on any of its changes. Simply put eBay look at the money coming in and think that it's all good. The metrics say otherwise - ie buyers/sellers/items sold but the execs, as is their remit, care about shareprice and shareholders returns. They have a legal and financial duty to make the best return for shareholders, not you or I. So as long as the shareholder returns are doing well, then they are doing a good job. Buyers and sellers do not close their accounts, they let them go dormant, so therefor it looks like there is no shift in the metrics

[triple512]

…..unless of course everyone realises that promoted listings are BS and stop promoting..!

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Buyers and sellers do not close their accounts, they let them go dormant, so therefor it looks like there is no shift in the metrics

Whilst it may well be true that the majority will let accounts dormant, ebay does actually report on active accounts.  So this is something that is measured and not hidden.

Last available figure is for Q4 2024, where they had 134 mil active accounts.

If your not aware though, Ebay UK is roughly a third of the total revenue for Ebay worldwide.  So probably more than you realise and is it's second largest market.

As to Ebay rolling back it's changes, it has responded in the past with changes to what it has done.

Such as after dropping paypal, it brought in the low cost fees after sellers complained.

So it's not as impossible as you make it sound for changes to repealed.  It depends on it's user base making a sufficiently large complaint.

[theelench]

Yes I agree with everything you say.  I can only remember one example of ebay rolling back a bad move.  That was when it went overboard in giving sellers Defects for what seemed like almost every aspect of a transaction.  For whatever reason, they were just as suddenly done away with.

But IMO this is a development since the 80s 'Big Bang' and is unhealthy.  Now, returns to (mainly corporate) shareholders are king and the boards pander to them.  Previously, shareholders (mainly retail) deferred to the board who were more interested in the long-term health and development of the company (and keeping their jobs).  Shareholders accepted lower returns, the trade-off being long-term security and capital gains.  The difference being that now shareholders are more interested in bolstering their short-term 'Casino' trading profits.  Before, in long-term security, stability and capital growth.

This works best if todays corporate investors control the boards of all the biggest companies in the sector, so that whichever company does 'best', they still get their returns.  (Sellers fleeing ebay will flock to etsy or amazon and increase their profits.)  

But IMO it's a house of cards ?  Ebay is making money and paying dividends on the smoke and mirrors of PL fees, not growing anything tangible like market share or sales.

Without direct knowledge, etsy seems as bad, if not worse than ebay.  Amazon may be the same for all I know, but I have never bought or sold there.

Corporate shareholders seem to me to be holding ever growing stakes in an industry that is increasingly 'hollow' ?  So what if business sellers on ebay do screw up their courage and cut off ebay's PL revenue ?  Where is the profit then ?  The share price drops like a stone.  That hits Vanguard and Blackrock who control etsy and amazon, where do the dominoes stop falling?  Dare I mention International Trade Tariffs in this mix?

As we've seen before, in finance and shareholding everything appears to be rock solid until someone gets a bit too greedy or goes one step beyond credibility and someone twigs that the mirror is cracked and says "What ?"

[custom-giftsuk]

In the US, a board of directors has a legal & fiduciary duty to shareholders, including a duty to maximize shareholder value, which includes the value of their shares.

That is the primary responsibility. Yes long term health of the company is also mentioned but the primary responsibility is to the shareholders and making cash for them. Anything else... is secondary. 

So whilst a manager might see that the company is in trouble, anyone at executive level or higher - its all about the share price and to hell with anything else.

So eBay and every other company will continue to squeeze as much as possible as that is their job, not the wellbeing or satisfaction of people who use that company.

[theelench]

Oh well !  

Lucky I'm old and heavily into cash and disposed of my interests in shares mostly before but some after the '08 crash. 

[charmkeyrings]

Thank you very much for taking the time and trouble to type that out. I read it carefully and I do understand.