Promoted Listings Dynamic Rate Minimum Now 5%

[valueaddedresource]

Just a heads up about a change that appears to impacting US, UK and likely all the other eBay sites - apparently eBay has decided to react to investor concerns about weak Q4 revenue guidance by quietly ratcheting up the minimum for Promoted Listings General Dynamic Ads to 5%.

It still shows a minimum of 2% for fixed rate

But the Dynamic ad rate cap is now a minimum of 5%

Not sure how that is impacting existing campaigns with a cap below 5% but my guess is those ads just may not be delivering at this time. I'd suggest checking your campaigns and ad reports if you have it set below 5% to see if/when performance may have been affected.

Also, while sellers can still technically set fixed rate at 2%,  the fact is, if sellers using the Dynamic option are forced to a 5% minimum, that will naturally raise the competitive bar and likely reduce performance for fixed rate below that amount, which may basically make 5% the de facto minimum across the board.

It's a sneaky change at the worst time of year for sellers and absolutely unacceptable they've done it with no notice, in my opinion.

[pg_kicks]

Apologies if I'm being an idiot but what happens if everyone just promoted at 5%? how do eBay decide who gets higher promotion? Its probably explained somewhere and I may be having a stupid moment/day/week but the whole pay to advertise your listing baffles me.

Not shocked by this move though, we know eBay dont care about us as sellers, they care about the money and the fact that private accounts can now promote at 7% and be better off than 99.99% of businesses will be the reason they've done this.

[valueaddedresource]

@pg_kicks I don't have a specific reference to point to off hand, but eBay execs and ad program managers have said at various times that the ad rate doesn't determine performance/ranking/visibility alone and things like titles, item specifics, image quality, sell through rate, seller metrics etc. can and do all still factor into ranking and placements as well.

So, in theory, if everyone used an ad rate of 5%, eBay would still use other ways to sort and rank, but like many things it's a bit of a black box and we just have to take their word for it.

And as you point out, it will likely impact business sellers the most.

[pg_kicks]

So basically everything that it used to be based on but now if you pay more you get higher, so in reality its based on how much you pay. The site would be so much better if they had people runnign it who knew what their customers actually wanted.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

I do wonder if the hike in the minimum percentage rate is a pre cursor to an announcement regarding final value fees for all business sellers (not just clothing).

It wouldn't surprise me if something big was announced soon.

I don't think the free final value fees for private sellers is working how Ebay expected (not sure why they expected it to work well) and they are going to have to make some big decisions to keep the platform viable.

[valueaddedresource]

Just as an update on this - eBay has also increased the minimum bid amounts for Promoted Listings Priority Cost Per Click ads as well, at least in the US, again with no notice to sellers about the change.

The minimum bid amount used to be $0.02, now it's $0.10-$0.20 per click depending on how you set up the campaign.

When it was pointed out to eBay that their policy page still said $0.02, they just did a stealth edit a few days later while not acknowledging the issue or that it was a change.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Promoted-Listings-Dynamic-Rate-Minimum-Now-5-Check-Your-Genera... 

I have not been able to confirm yet if this is a global change that would impact the UK too, but I strongly suspect it is, so sellers who use Promoted Listings Priority may want to check their campaigns as well.