Here's eBay's new way of determining whether a Promoted Listing's sale is due to the Promotion and not merely coincidental:
"An attributed sale will be when any buyer purchases the promoted item within 30 days of any click on the ad, regardless of whether the buyer themselves clicked on the ad. The item must be promoted at the time of click and the time of sale. The seller will be charged the ad rate at the time of sale".
This is false attribution because the sale cannot be linked to the promotion which has been paid for.
Under this rule sellers will not be able to determine whether what they pay for promotion is producing a result.
Ordinary press advertising on paper media is costly and doesn't have a direct link to results and most viewers ignore most ads. EBay has a Search engine which used to enable buyers and sellers to trade. If Promoted helps widen the potential pool of buyers great, but does it?
One recent sale of mine was a watercolour of Anstruther to a collector whose sole saved search on eBay is for "Anstruther" and he scrolls down the list where he found my item. He has a private museum devoted to that place. EBay charged for Promoted even though there were no other bidders and I had slashed the price due to the ringing silence of the lack of interest. I felt my wallet had been dipped when I saw the figure for Promoted.
