Priority Campaign Listing Impressions, Views & Sales 50% Drop – Potential Bug or Algorithm Change?

[bilbouk]

Hi all,

I’m posting to ask if anyone else is experiencing a similar issue with their Priority CPC campaigns.

We had several high-performing listings that were temporarily out of stock earlier this year. Once our new shipment arrived, we restocked and reactivated all relevant listings and campaigns. Everything was running normally at first — until September 9th, 2025, when we saw a sudden and unexplained drop in traffic and sales.

To give a concrete example, here’s the performance of one key listing that typically gets 100,000+ views per month (based on daily tracking we do outside eBay). When we restarted its campaign in late August, views spiked as expected:

• 20/08/2025 – 460 views/month

• Views kept spiking

• 03/09/2025 – 19,839 views/month

• 04/09/2025 – 21,585 views/month

• 05/09/2025 – 23,835 views/month

• 06/09/2025 – 29,812 views/month

• 07/09/2025 – 30,012 views/month

• 08/09/2025 – 32,001 views/month

• 09/09/2025 – 30,159 views/month - Sudden views drop

Then, starting on 10/09/2025, everything declined sharply — views stopped increasing and sales dropped by over 50%, with no recovery since. This issue is affecting all listings that are using Priority campaigns on our account. Nothing has changed on our end:

• Budgets are high and consistent

• CPC bids are competitive (we even raised them, no effect)

• Listings are fully optimized and performing well for many months

• Account health is excellent

• All campaign settings and targeting are correct

We're manually managing everything — no third-party tools — so we’re sure nothing was misconfigured.

The Questions:

1. Has eBay recently changed something in the ad auction or algorithm?

2. Is there a known bug or ongoing delivery issue affecting sellers?

3. Has anyone else seen this exact traffic pattern suddenly collapse without explanation?

This is a serious issue. Our campaign ROI is now completely off, and we’ve lost confidence in Priority if performance can vanish overnight for no reason. We'd appreciate any insights — or ideally, an official response from eBay if this is being looked into.

It looks that opening own online store and use Google Ads could be a better option than eBay that is able to ruin a shop overnight. 

Our shop usually sees the best sales on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. However, yesterday's sales were extremely poor, and today's are already following the same trend — we've only had two sales so far.

I hope eBay will look into this. Their chat support is quite frustrating: the AI makes it nearly impossible to speak to a real agent, and if you manage to get through, you're often connected with someone who lacks the necessary knowledge — similar to BT support asking, "Is your router plugged in?"

Thanks in advance to anyone who replies.

[style_wise]

Good question! Since you've reached other Sellers here, not eBay, perhaps raise it during Chat with the eBay Team on Wednesdays at 2pm.

[thesmokingrunner]

@bilbouk 

Assuming you'd rather not wait until next Wednesday to re-post everything you've written above perhaps this would be more helpful:

dave@ebay 

marco@ebay 

kat@ebay 

Can any of you help with the OP's questions? Thanks in advance.

[meke]

How can we get to this chat on Wednesdays? It is on Wednesdays 2pm BST?   

[bilbouk]

I have received an official response from eBay:

"We have reviewed the information you provided, and based on your report and recent community feedback, we believe this may be a wider technical issue rather than a problem with your specific account or settings.

Please understand that while our technical team works to resolve this, we may not have a quick, definitive answer. We can assure you, however, that your concerns are being taken very seriously."

I hope this helps someone else who, like me, is struggling to understand what’s going on with their sales.

[gemshine2024]

Hi I am a new seller but something I noticed with my impressions was yesterday I had almost 4K and today I've only got around 400 so big difference. I'm not too sure why. I even have 10% promoted listings as my products are high value. Could anyone please advise too on mine. I reply on this post as I feel it is the algorithm too.

[natocit2015]

Hello community I also have a similar problem in the last month my sales have also fallen by about 50%. Organic is not visible at all. I have 80% of the products advertised and views have decreased by 45% in the last period. The algorithms that used to work, that is, changing the ad, new ads and so on, do not work at all. It seems to me that this is connected with the new Cossini algorithms. They introduced artificial intelligence very seriously and it most likely perceives such things as unstable lots. And does not show them. What worked before, now does not work. I do not know what to do with it. I have a hundred percent result, a wonderful seller with a long history of over 10 years.
And such a problem, this is not a problem of sellers, that is, it is a problem of sellers but first of all it is a problem of eBay, because eBay should do something about this and explain to sellers why this happened.
eBay needs to change its attitude towards sellers. eBay probably understands this and is probably doing something about it. Because statistics show that there is an outflow of sellers to other platforms (eBay probably knows this).
p/s Why don't eBay representatives comment on this?

[bilbouk]

That's correct. In our case, we experienced a major drop in sales, and although there was a slight recovery, the situation has worsened again. For example, since last Friday (24th October), sales have been terrible – around a 50% drop. Yesterday and today have been a nightmare, and as we all know, this is not down to us sellers. Especially those of us who have been running long-term, well-performing ads and know exactly what we're doing.

This is definitely down to algorithm changes. I believe eBay is actually hurting itself significantly by doing this, as it's essentially cutting its own profits in half – which I don’t understand at all.

Since the last algorithm update on 9th September, when we first noticed a significant drop, I've also observed that a few organic sales started coming through. That hadn’t really happened for us before, as nearly 100% of our sales were coming through promoted listings. We’ve seen some returning buyers and the occasional organic sale, but this month those have become much more rare. It feels like things are going back to a state where nearly all sales are from promoted listings again – which is really frustrating.

I think eBay should speak up about these changes and communicate new updates to their sellers properly. But with hundreds of cases being closed in favour of buyers, we all know how much they really care about sellers. The truth is, what can they do without us? Their approach feels short-sighted and selfish. They know we’ll keep selling here no matter what, and no matter how much they squeeze out of us – that’s why they prioritise buyers over sellers.

"Why don't eBay representatives comment on this?" I'm not even sure if they’re browsing these community threads at all.