eBay’s promoted listings strategies — both General and Priority — may seem like convenient ways to increase visibility, but in reality, they are heavily skewed in favor of eBay and offer minimal advantage to sellers. These models are cleverly designed to ensure eBay earns fees at nearly every stage, regardless of whether you actually make a profitable sale.
The Priority strategy uses a cost-per-click (CPC) model, which means you are charged every time someone clicks on your ad — regardless of whether they buy anything or not. This quickly becomes a financial sinkhole, as idle browsers, window shoppers, or even competitors can click through your listings and cost you real money without any return. It’s a model that offloads all risk onto the seller while eBay profits from sheer curiosity alone.
The General strategy appears more reasonable at first glance since you're only charged when a sale is made. However, the reality is far more problematic. If a buyer clicks on one of your general ads and ends up buying any of your other promoted items within 30 days, eBay charges you a fee — not necessarily for the item they clicked, but for the one they ultimately bought. This is called a Halo sale. You could promote a low-cost item at a modest ad rate, only to have a buyer return weeks later and buy a high-ticket item with a higher ad rate, and eBay will charge you the higher fee based on the rate at the time of the sale, not the click. This means your advertising costs can spike unpredictably, eroding your profit without warning.
It gets even worse when both strategies are running simultaneously. If a buyer first clicks on a general ad and later clicks on a priority ad, the system will attribute the sale to the general campaign, meaning you still get charged — and you lose any control over which campaign takes credit. This attribution system is opaque and favors eBay’s bottom line. The reporting becomes convoluted, with overlapping charges and attribution that serves the platform more than the seller.
What becomes clear is that eBay has engineered these systems to maximize its own revenue while giving sellers the illusion of choice. You're charged for clicks whether or not they lead to sales. You're charged for sales even when the clicked item wasn’t the one sold. You're charged based on whichever ad rate benefits eBay more. And you’re left to parse vague, delayed reports that don’t give you real clarity or control over your ad spend.
In practice, this means that most small to mid-sized sellers end up paying more in ad fees than they recover in meaningful sales. The ROI is unpredictable and often negative. Unless you're a high-volume seller with deep margins and time to micromanage campaign analytics, these promoted listing strategies are more likely to eat your profits than boost them.
eBay’s advertising ecosystem is not designed to empower sellers — it's designed to extract value from them under the guise of visibility. Sellers would be far better off focusing on organic optimization: write strong titles, use quality images, price competitively, and build customer trust. Those are proven strategies that don’t come with hidden fees, complex attribution games, or expensive lessons.
eBay wins whether you sell or not. But if you rely on these promoted strategies, you're the one taking all the risk — and often footing the bill for very little in return.
