This is a long one with some important advice (in my opinion) towards the bottom. It's worth reading because this is by far the biggest change in eBay fees in history, and seems to have largely gone unnoticed next to eBay's other acts of self harm lately.
eBay have announced they plan to charge promoted listings fees on any sale of a promoted item that has been clicked, regardless of whether a sale was via a promoted click or not. In other words, if user A clicks on your promoted item on Saturday, and then user B clicks on that same item, but via organic placement, 2 weeks later, you will still be charged the promoted item fee.
Here's some implications I can see coming from that, beyond just the fact costs will increase.
1. After the first promoted click in a month, eBay has no incentive to promote your items. If your item sells to anyone after even a single click BY ANYONE eBay will get their promoted fee. 1% of your clicks could be promoted but you'd pay the promoted fee on 100% of sales.
2. Your competitors can unilaterally increase your fees with one click. They don't need to buy your items to do so, all they have to do is click your promoted listing once a month and your fees will be higher.
3. You'll lose all of your sales to anyone who has an adblocker. This is probably actually the big one, but hear me out. By law, a website must disclose when it is being paid to promote a product (beyond the standard fees). eBay does this by writing 'sponsored' on listings. Fair enough. Except your listing could previously appear as sponsored sometimes and organic other times (such as when people are using adblockers). From now on, eBay will be receiving that commission on any sponsored item that has been clicked within the last 30 days. Which means your listing, after being clicked once, can no longer legally be shown without the 'sponsored' tag, because eBay will be gaining a commission beyond their normal fees if the user buys that item. Most adblockers remove results showing that tag. You will lose those sales.
4. There is no guidance (that I've seen anyway) on what happens if you change your ad percentage. I'd be happy for an eBay rep to chime in, but this likely means that you will be charged the highest ad rate you specify in any 30 day period. If you advertise at 20% in week 1 and 5% in week 2, that 5% rate will likely only kick in 30 days after you apply it. If you coincided price drops with ad rate drops, this could be a devastating oversight.
5. To build on that, you're essentially locked into advertising for 30 days after you stop. Sometimes I remove listing promotion at the same time as lowering my prices to keep sales going. Of course, there has always been the risk that a previous 'promoted clicker' will buy at the lower price, meaning you lose out, but now that will be the case with *any* buyer. If you remove a 20% promoted ad fee and lower prices by 20%, for the 30 following days you will be losing 20% on the lower prices while also still paying the 20% promoted fee, all while also not having your item promoted too.
Things you can do today.
1. Turn off promoted listings. This is urgent. The change comes in in exactly 30 days. That gives you 0 days notice. If you wait 29 days to turn off your ads, you're essentially locked into paying for ads for the next 59 days.
2. Contact eBay and ask for clarification. I'm not a particularly smart man, half of this is guesswork because the details are so... well there aren't any.
3. Contact the ASA. I have done so to ask their policy on sponsored attribution. They have confirmed (generally speaking, not specifically) that organic listings would have to be properly attributed as 'sponsored' if the marketplace provider stood to gain a marketing fee from a sale, even if not in a promoted spot. If eBay don't implement it this way, they are breaking the law. It would also be worth asking what proportion of a marketplace's search listings could be 'sponsored' on any one search page. The Google fine for doing similar was in the billions.
4. Contact your MP. You are a small business benefiting the economy, and your MP would likely have something to say about a big business ripping you off. It only takes one out of the 650 of them to actually bother to do something about it.
5. Start thinking about whether you'd register for any kind of class action lawsuit. This change will likely mean eBay gaining sponsored fees from almost 100% of listings on their search pages. By law they need to show a proportion of organic listings prominently in search results. If that proportion is too low, it's illegal. If it's not too low that means the 10% (I'm guessing) of completely non-sponsored listings are shown more often than sponsored listings, in which case there is no gain to sponsoring listings and you've been sold a false promise. eBay will not be able to say things like "sponsored listings gain 100% more sales" or similar wording if it can be shown that their changes (making virtually everything de-facto sponsored) would reasonably be expected to change that figure. If they do claim that, you will have been the victim of a misleading claim.
6. Start exploring future business opportunities with stable companies you can trust. You know what this means, I'm not going to get this post deleted by spelling it out.
7. Protect your own mental health. Some will say this is silly or pointless advice, but it's important. We've all had that sinking feeling when sales slow down, like we're doing something wrong and have failed. In most cases, it's not true. Don't convince yourself you're the problem. The increasingly panicky changes that eBay are implementing will affect your sales. Sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. Seeing a wall of 'sponsored' on every search page is like a cup of cold sick to users, as is a marketplace where every price is inflated to pay sponsored fees on even organic listings. Buyers lose trust fast, but they're losing trust in the marketplace, not in you. You're doing fine. Probably. Unless you're that guy who sold me a faulty laptop 8 years ago.
