I can only speak for us, but promotions have mostly seemed like an on/off switch. Problem with making a "rule" is it's not a static measurement.
We had only done the minimum for awhile, which was 1% at the time. For us, about a year before they officially raised it to 2%, 1% did nothing and we had to go 2% to get the same results. In one of my threads about this at the time eBay said it was a "test", so it seems the 2% thing was a test and we were unlucky enough that it occurred on our store or category.
But then 2% wasn't enough. The switch turned "off" and we lost like ~80 of our traffic. At which point we had to spread out anywhere from 2-4% or 2-6%.
Sales just got worse and worse, though, and it seemed as time went on, the "switch" to turn traffic on kept becoming higher and higher.
Our testing within the last year proves it's still a "switch". With our sales so poor, we've been at record highs for our investment, and it literally did not budge our traffic or sales one bit.
Here's the problem, though: Lowering it is RISKY. Because I've shared screenshots in our earlier posts, if we lowered our investment and the switch "turned off", then just a few days later put our promotion campaigns to how they were when they started, the promoted traffic *and organic traffic* does NOT return to the level it was at before.
So long story short, even risking lowering investment might backfire and permanently lose traffic.
This last year has been strange, though. The site is riddled with errors and glitches that were never fixed. Most alarming of them being that the traffic and ad pages do NOT add up properly, and defy their definitions of clicks/views/etc. The traffic numbers they give are literally impossible. I was in communication with eBay community managers/leadership/other employees, and while they seemed to genuinely want to help, the tech team gave bogus explanations that could be debunked, every single one of them ended up ghosting... So that tells me either the problem can't be fixed, or they can't confirm them in writing due to internal policies.
So I'm not even sure the ad rates are working as intended. Sometimes it seems as if investing more HURTS the traffic more than helps. We also are in constant communication with the other top sellers of their categories, and it just seems odd when the sellers we KNOW are both receiving the best prices in the country AND investing the most in ads, are no longer on the top of search results, same as we are.
With that said, sadly ad rate has to be tested in your category to see what investment % you have to do to "turn that switch on" - which will be VERY visible on your traffic pages (as I said, it's substantial, like an 80% increase in traffic). Once it's on, don't invest any more, because it's no use, and with the current glitches, may hurt your store. And be very careful, try not to fiddle with your rates too often, or you might end up permanently losing traffic/SEO you built over time.
mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
