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.

[planet78]

Well after cancelling yesterday I expected to come in this morning to no sales, but in fact overnight sales were about the same as they have been recently. As a bonus, no promoted listing fees have been charaged at all.

[jlovie]

Check back a day or so later - promoted fees often get added later.

[pierce563]

Just to put in some input, we have received no communication from ebay about these policy changes, it is only after the past couple days after seeing a sudden drop in daily deposit amounts and seeing all our sales being classed as promoted sales since the 24th (we have consistently been received about 30% organic sales since the beginning) I've had I have google and found this thread. 

I contacted ebay to look into the matter and they told me they have no idea as to why this was happening and looked like a "technical glitch", which judging by this thread is looking like a lie. They opened a ticket for the technical team to look into but doubt there will be any further response. Yesterday we saw one sale that was classed as organic but on checking this morning it has disappeared/been classed as promoted. I have already contacted the ombudsmen about the policy change at the beginning of the year for all untracked order funds to be held for 31days as we were not notified within the 60days stated in their policies when making changes to payments.  It would be best if everyone who has had a similar experience to open an official complaint with ebay customer service and report to an ombudsmen/watchdog, so far this year the way they have implemented changes has been underhanded and shady I don't doubt there isn't some law that is being broke. Were going to wait for a call back from the agent however if nothing comes of it or they do not call we will be filing another official complaint , adding this to our investigation with the ombudsmen and stopping all promotions and would advise all sellers to do the same.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I have already contacted the ombudsmen about the policy change at the beginning of the year for all untracked order funds to be held for 31days as we were not notified within the 60days stated in their policies when making changes to payments. 

There has been no change to the payments policy.

If your funds are being held, then it is due to a performance issue and not new policy.

As regards not being notified about the changes to promoted listings, you must have been in the ark!

It is currently sprawled across the top of every account I have in a big banner.

Every single account has also received emails.

It's been talked to death on the forums.

Hellfire, it's even been on multiple news websites!

So you have obviously not paid any attention if you have not got that information.

[home-garden-furniture-shop]

It's just insane. I have found 'private' sellers who are 'business' sellers, stealing my branding and selling other products pretending to be mine, at a lower price as it is already. Now since Wednesday, all my sales are classed as promoted sales, where before then 60% were organic. Business sellers are just going to end up getting ran off eBay, while all these private business sellers get priotised and don't bring in as much revenue as we do for eBay. Make it make sense. 

[pierce563]

When contacting about the hold they have stated account is in good health and there should not be any payment hold due to this. After filing an official complaint they said there is a new change for all untracked item funds to be held for 31days which came in February (we were only notified by email 2 weeks prior) no information for either change was shown in our seller hub either hence we have had to take this to the ombudsmen which they have accepted and currently investigating. The banner for the promoted listing has only showed today after the changes which is what lead me to the forum to get answers as the customer service I called yesterday had no idea and stated it looked like an error.

[planet78]

Mine usually appear within a few minutes of the sale. I've had none since two days ago, so hopefully I've seen them off going forward.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

There has been no change for business sellers.

So whoever told you that, must have thought that you were a private seller.

You should however have received an email telling you why this change has been made.

I guarantee you, that you will have received something and it WILL be performance related.

I suggest that you go back through your Ebay mail and look at what they have sent you.

If they have placed some sort of hold there, then there have been complaints or notifications such as item not received or very late etc.

Have you actually looked at your service metrics?

[difficult2find]

So here we are, over a month later and my sales are dramatically down since I cancelled Promoted Listings. My organic sales look like they are starting to pick up but they haven't even got back to their usual level let alone taking up slack from the sales in promoted listings. Organic impressions dropped by over 50% which shouldn't happen, this either means it was a deliberate act or they were being mis-attributed to organic when they were promoted.

Whilst I am not there yet, if it doesn't improve in another couple of weeks I might well put promoted back on at a rate at least 50% less to account for the additional coverage it'll receive. Noted my competitors are still undercutting my prices which i'm fine with as it's not the same product without changing their prices AND they are still promoting. They must not realised how badly they are going to be hammered!

[jlovie]

Is it worth an experiment in setting them at the 2% min?

It's difficult to work out what effect increasing the % has. Or is any promotion a big advantage over none?

I wonder what would happen with doubling the price of something and setting at 50%.

[iceblue_uk]

In most cases I would doubt that it is worth paying an extra promo % on all orders of your item for 30 days, something which could be triggered by a single buyer click and no purchase.

We have used general promo constantly on all items for 8 years, but having switched them all off for almost a month now it has become clear that it did not increase revenue as much as we had thought. it was scary at first but as others have said, it does get better and the higher margin makes it worth it.

Certainly, with these new attribution rules, the saving we have made on promo fees in the last 30 days has outweighed the extra revenue we would have received by using general promotion. All sales are now organic and it feels really, really good that our margin is now at least double the ebay fees on a sale, rather than the other way around!

I doubt we'll ever go back now, even if ebay were to drop this 'you will pay us a promo percentage on every sale, even if the leads we provide aren't effective' attitude to general promotion.

[difficult2find]

I know that selling at 0% has a big impact!!! That's my thinking, 5% has to be better than 0%. I would still be profitable back at 12% for everything but I don't see why I should pay for the organic listings as well. Ultimately I need to amend the business plan, I need to diversify where I am selling to my own website and other platforms and I need money to do that. Right now I don't have a lot to plow into other projects because i'm hardly selling anything, with promoted listings I'll not be earning what I want from it but I'll be earning so I can invest and that's the key thing here. I'm under no illusion that what I do makes any difference to ebay either way of course so whatever decision I make has to work for me and that goes for anyone else in this position. It's fine saying "stick one to ebay for this policy change" but ultimately they don't care and I'll be the one hurting for it.

[difficult2find]

I'm down £400 per month and maybe saving £30 in fees! I would be very happy if that changed but it's not looking good right now.

[planet78]

£400 turnover or profit? Frightening if it's the latter.

[jbrusby]

I've had all my listings at the 2% minimum for years (and 1% when it was allowed) which had been enough to keep things ticking over without impacting profits too much...at least until this year when sales have been slow and erratic. I've experimented with both reducing prices and using the recommended % - usually between 12% and 18% - but neither has resulted in any change to sales whatsoever so I've concluded they're just a blatant money grab for Ebay. It's possible if you go higher, maybe 30% if you're a big player and can afford it, then it has some impact but who knows.

But there's no way I'd consider upping the % since the new PL rule came in this week. Every single sale I've made in the 4 days since the 24th has been a PL, zero organic sales, which has never happened in all my years selling here. It had looked like I had a few organic sales yesterday and the day before, but I found today the PL fees were being taken off those and they're now marked Promoted. So it's clearly a clunky system that backs up fees and takes them at random times.

[pidgeun1]

eBay has levers to squeeze the life out of sellers. They will perennially increase the FVF and sneakily increase the minimum Ad Rates every year. They will change the PL attribution method further to make it 100%. Any sale of promoted listing will be subject to Ad fees. They will change the budget pacing from monthly to yearly for Priority Ads to get more room to splurge seller's money faster and nudge them to add more money. They will have more click bots on the website to click on Promoted Listings. They will increase the monthly store subscription fees. They will make sure that the Top rated sellers are less than 1% so that they are not giving FVF discounts to more sellers. They will adjudicate 99% claims as seller fault so that they get to keep the FVF from the sellers even if the buyer is refunded. They will monetize everything beyond ebay balance, managed shipping and lay traps for the naive and uninformed sellers. Be watchful! 

[lupo-store]

This is one of the longest threads ever. It’s clear to see this is a way to make more money for eBay.

so what are people who promoted on general doing? Are you switching it off, reducing %?

[designedinashed]

Try £3k - £3.5k month to £1k month, that stings a little.
All my items are now off PL have been for 2-3 week but since Feb/March sales have just dropped of a cliff week on week. 

I suggest calling CS ask to speak with the selling team and complain, my last call the CS person said they have been told to now note any complaints as HO are concerned, he said they have never asked CS agents to do this before, and even admitted that the amount of people all saying sales are way down is like nothing he has seen before.
100% look at cross posting on other platforms as I doubt ebay are going to turn this around and get people back buying selling like before. 

[brindsey]

I've taken all my promoted listings off and am not now inuccring the Ad fee general.

[designedinashed]

not sure how that works with no listings in your shop ?