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.

[custom-giftsuk]

Yes you can figure out what eBay are going to do next.

Its super easy.

eBay will do whatever makes eBay more money.

Whether than be SD for businesses (my own personal favourite bet) to increasing final fees.

I think they have, at the moment, kicked everyone around enough in the short term and they'll be rolling out the lessons learned in the UK to the rest of the world.

Then when they are done scooping up all that cash.... they'll get a bigger scoop.

[juicebitz]

Another update: Another two weeks have passed expecting with reduced Ad Rates on General Campaigns, that overall, the Advertising Costs should come down to our precisely calculated model, however, we are still over 12% out almost double in Ad Fees than we are expecting to pay, yet everything is Fixed or Dynamic + Cap Rate.

So, this is now two months in and still nothing has been sorted at eBay.
However, from the number of calls they must be getting - you can see that they have tried to explain in the Ads Dashboard what each of the 4 Areas are, and how it is calculated. Notice now, and this has ONLY JUST CHANGED within the last week. When you click on the ROAS Information Button (i), you can see that they are saying:

"Return on ad spend. Your sales, divided by ad fees. Includes both promoted and non-promoted sales, provided the buyer purchased one of your non-promoted items in the 30 days following a click on one of your priority ads or Promoted Offsite ads.

The ROAS shown in the campaign grid below may be counted in more than one ad type due to the way in which eBay attributes sales. As a result, the total ROAS amount below may add up to be higher."

They have also changed one of the other ones in under 7 Days, previous when you clicked on one it talked about "Halo" and "Direct" attribution. That is still confusing the hell out of everyone, so they have tried to cover their backs and make it sound simpler - but simply put, their Ad system is not working correctly and I 100% confirm from 2 months analysis that we are being over-charged.

This cannot go on eBay, or ALL ADVERTISING is going to stop completely.

[pegr-834437]

I hope somebody within your company is going to the Birmingham open event as they will have either the big 'conference' style set up where they might ask for questions but certainly will have the workshops where the 'managers' from ads and the likes will be there who you can ask and have 30/40 other sellers around you giving their input too. Plus the managers will hang around a stall type set up and if you take your evidence they cant really then go nah mate thats wrong.

Also I don't want direct info but surely you have contacts within eBay thanks to your level of sales that mean you get pretty decent email addresses and you arent just wasting time talking to customer services (who try to do an incredible job but restricted) but are limited to what they can say/do from those above them.

[gardenhomeuk]

Read a lot about ''selling similar'' when ending a listing - does it matter if there are a lot of watchers - do the watches get a notification? 

[cobwebcottage]

No they don't. They will only see that the listing has ended in their watch list. 

If you have quite a few watchers and have had sales on that listing, I would let it roll over as you will also lose your history. No watchers, then, end and sell similar.

[pegr-834437]

I'd love eBay to come out and actually just explain how the algorithm works, really they want us to sell as much as possible to explaining it might actually help. Everything I thought was true was basically told the opposite when I read an email from a friends account when he was speaking to an ads team manager, sell similar wipes everything off so unless you are adding new pictures and item specifics its better to keep a 90 day old listing with no sales but 3 visits than just to sell similar, or thats what he was told. 

[gardenhomeuk]

At what point (age of listing) is it best to refresh the listing though. Million dollar question I guess. Items with one or 2 sales in months and only a few views in 30 days with no watches. It is demoralising - even though pricing is comparable. 

[pegr-834437]

Yeah thats very true but its either have any history linked with it or none what so ever. Only found this out as a friends account dropped by 85% on organic impressions and was told that because they sell similar/ended this is the reason, they are going to the open event to make sure what they were told is true as it looks very strange.

[pal_version]

watchers mean noting on eBay - the majority are people just tracking an item to see what it sells for. its almost as if they have never heard of the "sold for" search option.

don't get too hung up on impressions and watchers, its views that count. ending and sell similar will have no effect on this. eBay telling us it is no good is just BS, its more likely they don't like us doing it for some sort of admin reason they are unwilling to admit to.

[fatbobfan]

Would love that explanation, Dark Art get mentioned in an official video!

@gardenhomeuk  approx same time, explains the process a little on what to do with sell similar, watchers/sales etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdjacpSczco

This I belive this the process and has not changed, could be wrong, perhaps mods others could correct me, kits an official Ebay vid, not a vlogger

[gardenhomeuk]

interesting. They talk in this video about ending and relisting - not selling similar. 

[pegr-834437]

I haven't watched the video yet, but from everything I have been told its the same thing. I always thought sell similar kept the history but it seems it doesnt.

[gardenhomeuk]

No, they confirmed the history goes, but that it can help with the 'best match' algorithm. 

[fatbobfan]

There is a thread I cant find @bojangled  might be able to help, the long tips thread, its a long one but worth the read, gives imo, trusted sellers opinions on what works and what doesnt.

Its a couple of years old, the practices will be the same but the platform would have changed so make your own judgement

Ill keep looking for it, if someone else knows its title please post

[fatbobfan]

@bojangled Its been archived, sorry for wasting your time

[auctiongabble]

If items that have been on inventory for some time (i mean many months) and its had the usual end / sell similar a number of times.  Would there be any benefit to end old listings and create a complete new listing from scratch compared to sell similar? Timewise it will be a ball ache 

Watchers mean nothing, i have many on my items, send offers out and nothing, they decline yet don't make an offer.  Now switching most to BUY it now priced, still get people messaging if i would accept an offer, when i ask them to message me the offer to consider, nothing! 

[jlovie]

My understanding is Sell Similar creates a completely new listing, all it does is copy the details across to save having to type them in again. No connection to the original listing.

Sell Similar can be used with live listings, or even another user's listings, so I can't see how it can be connected to the listing being copied.

Relist has a connection to the old listing, which gets a banner something like 'the seller has relisted this item". That can help with old watchers.

Something to watch out for is obsolete item specifics, I see that quite a lot when re-jigging old listings.

eBay has a habit of changing IS unnecessarily. Way back I remember them changing vinyl speed from '33RPM' to '33 RPM' meaning all existing listings got marked as speed 'not specified' and I had to edit them all.

Every so often I seem to get a dud listing, which should be popular but gets no views in months.

Ending and sell similar sees them getting the views.

[auctiongabble]

Ive always done sell similar rather than relist, probably stick with that.

I might just the a few completely new listings of items that have been dead for a while and compare results.

I have seen the obsolete item specific changes as well with some listings ive redone.  Sometimes the suggested new specific is exactley the same as the old... i don't know why ebay have to meddle with things like this when there is plenty of other things for them to fix.