Community Chat, September 18 @ 1:00 pm PT - Promoted Listings

[brian@ebay]

Join the Community team here at 1 PM PT on September 18th for our Weekly Chat with eBay Staff. The Promoted Listings team will be joining us to address any questions or feedback you have related to this tool.

The chat will be open for questions from 1-2 pm PT, at which point we'll close thread. While no additional questions can be submitted after this time, we'll continue to work on responding to any queries that may still be unanswered.

If you're new to the chat, welcome! Simply Reply to this post with your question from 1-2 PM Pacific Time and we'll be happy to look into it for you 

[kritlove]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Could you list all the locations where Promoted Listings appear aside from within the Search Results themselves? 

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Promoted Listings appear throughout the buyer experience, including listing and product pages, homepage, in addition to desktop and mobile search results pages.  We are always testing and iterating on best Promoted listings placements to drive the most conversion.  Placement and ranking are influenced by a variety of factors, including ad rate, quality, relevancy, and competing listings.

[ldavis789]

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@vrykalak wrote:

Why is PL not allowed for Auctions?

Is there any plan to allow that in the future?

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Promoted Listings is not available for auctions because it's a cost-per-sale model that allows sellers to select their ad rate based on the sale price. With auctions there is no way to know the final sale price, so we are exploring new ways for Promoted Listings to eventually support that. 

[alan@ebay]

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@Anonymous wrote:

To Alan - I know I've requested this before, but can your team work on an actively updated sticky post for the weekly chat forum that outlines any upcoming dedicated topic chats coming in the next few weeks?

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Hi @Anonymous, 

Would love to do this. We announce the chats as soon as we lock the expert teams in. Sometimes chats come together last minute. I will work to improve the format of the chats and how we announce them.

Thank you! 

[kritlove]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi. Thanks to the promoted listings team for taking the time out today. On the Fall Seller Update board the new changes were being discussed. A few things the PL team said:

"Instead of fixed top slots in search (most recently, slots 1, 4, and 5), the top 5 slots in search will be a dynamic mix of both organic and promoted listings. While ad rates are certainly a factor that is considered for Promoted Listings placement, other factors that determine the performance of your listing include listing quality, relevancy, and more.  Listings will be shown based on which listing ranks higher: the organic or the promoted listing. This will help balance visibility for both promoted and organic listings, diversify the buyer experience, and help the overall health of the eBay marketplace. The remainder of the search results will maintain fixed slots for promoted listings. "

"Ad rate is one factor that is considered for Promoted Listings placement, but is not the only factor. Other factors include listing quality, relevancy, and more. Optimizing your listings for Best Match remains an important best practice. High quality listings have a higher potential to get more clicks and ultimately more sales.

With this change, if your organic listing naturally ranks higher, your Promoted Listing won’t appear in search, but can still be shown across other promoted placements onsite. Conversely, if your promoted listing ranks higher, your organic listing will no longer appear in the same set of search results."

With all other things being equal, a seller's promoted listing will always rank higher than their organic search result because of the added fee. How would a seller's organic search result to be chosen over their sponsored result? Does that only happen if another seller of a similarly ranked listing chooses a higher ad rate?

Side note - I may be imagining this, but it looks like the word sponsored is a lot smaller font than when the program first started and blends better into the search results - thanks for that!

To Alan - I know I've requested this before, but can your team work on an actively updated sticky post for the weekly chat forum that outlines any upcoming dedicated topic chats coming in the next few weeks?

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It is not necessarily the case that the promoted listing will always rank higher, as we will show the organic listing if that ranks above the promoted listing.  Given the fixed slots of promoted listings on search results page, the organic listing may have the opportunity to rank higher.   It is also possible that the seller has different promoted listing and organic listing in the search results.   

[billmill_2]

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@theteamsetguy wrote:

Sine the beginning of the month you removed the duplicate listings as a result of PL. My impressions are down about 25%. I presume the removal of the duplicates is why my impressions are down? I have approximately the same amount of listings. 

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There are many factors that can result in a reduction of your Promoted Listings impressions. Deduplication is one of the factors that could be impacting your impression volume. We will take a look into your account to see if there is anything that jumps out at us that would be driving this impact to your impressions.

[ldavis789]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Any advice on PL duration? I've heard that PLs get stale very quickly, that is, they don't get promoted as often if they've been on PL for too long. So, is it best to run them for a week? A month? Or just go with Continuous, because duration doesn't really enter it?

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From a technical perspective, there is no difference in the treatment based on the duration of the campaign. We encourage you to test to find what works best for you and your inventory! 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

A question about "trending rate" Let's say I add PL when I list my item. At that moment, trending rate is 4.5% and I choose trending rate. I also choose continuous. A month later, the trending rate for that item is now 8%. A buyer sees my listing at that point, and buys my item. Am I charged the trending rate as it existed when I first promoted the listing, or am I charged the higher rate that was trending when the buyer clicked on my listing? (I assume the 4.5%, but I've seen people asking about this...)

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Thanks.

[kritlove]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@dhbookds wrote:

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@kritlove wrote:

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@dhbookds wrote:

Has any thought been given to making the addition of listings to PL a choice as opposed to a default when relisting something?  I was relisting something yesterday and luckily saw the default check to add it....usually use TL, so not used to that.......

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This feature was created to make it easier to enable Promoted Listings when you re-list items that previously were being promoted.   If you no longer wish to promote that item at the time of re-listing, you are able to un-check the box to do so. 

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Yes, I realize that I can uncheck, my point was that I'm not pleased with it being checked in the first place........  just FYI

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I like that it's less work since I promote most of my listings, but in the beginning when I was only experimenting with a few listings I found it frustrating and time-wasting to have the box pre-selected. I think a good solution is to add something in the customize section of the listing form where sellers can choose to have it auto-populated or not. That would be a welcome enhancement.

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Thanks for the enhancement suggestion!   We always appreciate the feedback and will be sure to share this with our team for consideration.  thanks for using Promoted Listings!  

[Anonymous]

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@kritlove wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

"Ad rate is one factor that is considered for Promoted Listings placement, but is not the only factor. Other factors include listing quality, relevancy, and more. Optimizing your listings for Best Match remains an important best practice. High quality listings have a higher potential to get more clicks and ultimately more sales.

With this change, if your organic listing naturally ranks higher, your Promoted Listing won’t appear in search, but can still be shown across other promoted placements onsite. Conversely, if your promoted listing ranks higher, your organic listing will no longer appear in the same set of search results."

With all other things being equal, a seller's promoted listing will always rank higher than their organic search result because of the added fee. How would a seller's organic search result to be chosen over their sponsored result? Does that only happen if another seller of a similarly ranked listing chooses a higher ad rate?

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It is not necessarily the case that the promoted listing will always rank higher, as we will show the organic listing if that ranks above the promoted listing.  Given the fixed slots of promoted listings on search results page, the organic listing may have the opportunity to rank higher.   It is also possible that the seller has different promoted listing and organic listing in the search results.   

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1. How is it possible for the organic listing to rank higher than the promoted listing All aspects of the listing are exactly the same except one has an ad rate and one doesn't.

2. How do the fixed slots on the search results page affect an organic listing's placement?

3. What does this mean: " It is also possible that the seller has different promoted listing and organic listing in the search results."? I thought eBay was making a change to display only one or the other, not both.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

How granular is the trending rate?

What I mean is, let's say I'm listing a rare brooch in jewelry. Do you just look at the jewelry category generally? Do you look at sub category within jewelry (such as fine jewelry, disregarding costume jewelry), or do you go so far as to look at fine jewelry> brooches, and maybe even a designer name?

[ldavis789]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

A question about "trending rate" Let's say I add PL when I list my item. At that moment, trending rate is 4.5% and I choose trending rate. I also choose continuous. A month later, the trending rate for that item is now 8%. A buyer sees my listing at that point, and buys my item. Am I charged the trending rate as it existed when I first promoted the listing, or am I charged the higher rate that was trending when the buyer clicked on my listing? (I assume the 4.5%, but I've seen people asking about this...)

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Great question! Your assumption is correct. You are charged based on the trending ad rate you selected at the time you promoted your listing. 

[Anonymous]

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@theteamsetguy wrote:

Sine the beginning of the month you removed the duplicate listings as a result of PL. My impressions are down about 25%. I presume the removal of the duplicates is why my impressions are down? I have approximately the same amount of listings. 

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Hi @theteamsetguy, I will be reaching out to you via email; I've taken a quick look at your impressions and comparing the first 11 days of September to benchmark starting on August 1st only shows a 14.5% decrease. Moving the benchmark back to July 1st and June 1st, you actually have an impression increase of 10.7% & 27.5% respectively. I might need a little more info from you on what period of time you are comparing your September impressions to in order to fully research this  Keep an eye out for an email from me shortly.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

biggerfish,

let me try:

1 and2. There are only so many slots at the top going to PLs. If, organically, the top five are also promoted, and eBay is doing 2 PLs and 3 organic in the top five, then yours may show as organic.

3. Buyer A searches, sees your PL. Buyer B does same search, sees your organic. Only one (PL OR organic) is shown to each buyer, but different searches by different buyers can result in different PL/organic displays.

[roadking5555]

I  have brought this up in the weekly chat since 6-12, at least 3 different times and the last update was in the August chat that the promoted listings team was aware of the issue.

Now that we have the team here in chat, is there any progress or solution?

Recap below,

wondering if I someone can enlighten me with what has been going on with searches in the last week or so.( this was on 6-12 chat)

I have noticed on all my saved searches that the sponsored listings are coming up first. I have saved searches for auctions, ending soonest and I am seeing sponsored BIN listings that have over 20+ days left. Nothing to do with my search parameters.

I have even tried setting up new searches (with the same parameters) and same results. I do not want to see BIN's with over 20 days left, when I am looking at auctions, ending soonest. So now I have to scroll down to what I want to look for.

why am I seeing sponsored (promoted) listings that are not in line with my search results?

Is any progress being made on the "sponsored/promoted listings" showing up in searches.? Thanks!

@roadking5555 wrote:

tyler@ebay wrote:

Welcome everyone - the chat is now open for your questions!

I am following up from the previous two weekly chats on the sponsored (promoted) listings that show up in my search results that have nothing to do with my search parameters. The problem remains.

Is there any update or progress being made on this? I know it was forwarded to the appropriate team via Brain T. on 6-12-2019.

Thanks!

Hi @roadking5555, I don't have an update on this. The Promoted Listings team is aware of the issue though, so it's definitely on their radar to correct.