Notice something with Promoted listing impressions dropped significantly after raising but.....

[incrediblefinds199]

I wonder if anyone else is seeing this as i am, so i have been promoting my listings for a couple years now. I have about 700 items listed now(700 is what i normally have listed), and i raised the ad rate later last week on some of the oldest listings up a couple percent. I noticed a significant amount of impression increase. so i typically average around the same everyday, its always around 350,000 per day rarely hit a day lower than 300k Sundays typically over 400k. so this past Sunday i raised everything.  since that my impressions have been around 100k, its so odd. sales seemed the same, the thing that shows up odd and makes me think this might be a glitch. As far as page views, its been on a constant average. the pages views have been higher the past 3 days than any other day this month. sales seem about the same as well.  i am just curious if anyone notices last two days significantly low impression. as long as page views and sales stay the same that's fine.

its all seems a bit odd, i have been posting a bit more than normal as well!!!! then to see the graph plummet like that, just gives you a bad feeling, if you know what i mean!!! 

I also wonder if i did not play around with the numbers if it would have done that!!!! 

[incrediblefinds199]

anyone get a fix yet, the last 3 days my impressions have been right around the same number low but within 1k views. so odd its never been that close. its like there giving us a limit on promoted listing impressions. seems like its basically cut in  half since Monday with no fix yet or reach out from them!!! 

[themodernavenue]

I'm also wondering if anyone has seen anything regarding a fix or an eBay response to this?  My promoted listing impressions are way down starting July 18 and have not rebounded yet.  Today is day 6....it would be nice for an official eBay response!

[incrediblefinds199]

eBay is aware of this thread and the issue, but they said tech was going to reach out to me via messages, that was last Wednesday and no response from eBay on here either, i seen a different thread about this and eBay responded to them saying there were expediting a fix. They have not reached out to acknowledge. 

[zamo-zuan]

Promoted impressions had dropped for us, but performance has increased.

Also organic sales was broken on the graph for awhile, and has been fixed.

So whatever they did, I'm more inclined to believe it was a fix, because BOTH the PL and Traffic pages weren't matching for awhile, and performance was horrible during that time. 

[sextons-sweet-deals]

Help me understand this a little better. I don't get into all the stats. I just keep moving forward listing, revising, answering questions, sending offers, and countering offers. 

Do impressions mean people who actually clicked on / open your listing to read details and see all photos or just scrolling through their search? Could part of this data collected be falsely counted based on the phone app use?

I just checked my supposed impressions stat for the last month (june 24-july 24) and it claims 589,454. 

I find that hard to believe based on my sales. 

Take Care

[sextons-sweet-deals]

the 589,454 impressions would average out to about 19,648 per day average for the last month. 

I find that hard to believe!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@sextons-sweet-deals Impressions : just means someone has clicked on a page where one of your items is shown. Could be a search results page. Could be I opened an email from ebay for one of the items on my favorites list, and your PL was at the bottom of the page. I might never have scrolled down far enough to actually see your item, but it was on the page....so it's an impression. Since ebay has been placing Promoted listings on almost all available real estate, including the listing pages of other sellers, it's pretty easy to end up with a LOT of impressions. That does NOT mean anyone has actually clicked through to one of your listings---that would be considered a "view", and its no surprise that most sellers using PLS have FAR more impressions than views. And often, far more views than sales.

When ebay says, on average, sellers using PLS see 25% more VIEWS, remember, views aren't sales. You can bet if ebay stats showed 25% more SALES, ebay would say so. It's very likely that, on average, sellers using PLS do NOT see 25% more sales, and probably----judging by what we know of our own conversion rates, a fair but less than 25%.

So, with PLS, you will definitely see an increase in impressions, simply because your listing will be shown on so many more pages than a non-PLS will be shown on. You will probably see an increase in views. An increase in sales? Maybe, maybe not. An, even if you do see an increase in sales, it might be a big increase or it might be pretty small.

[the-hook-and-the-loop]

eBay is stating 25% more clicks with PLS and 50% more SALES with PLA.

[sextons-sweet-deals]

Thank you for the information!

I don't patriciate in PL. I like to think my listings are detailed, have a story when possible, and always reviewing and revising as needed. I still believe a shopper on eBay will do their shopping homework before making a spontaneous purchase on something that just pops up first due to PL.

Just sounds like an overrated / blown out of a proportion statistic that means nothing. 

Keep marching on seller!

[blacktopautoparts]

I wish we could go back to the days where we didn't need PL to sell anything on here. I think unless you are selling some really niche items that are always in demand, your listings will go unseen without PL. eBay has designed this system to work this way and it just really stinks as it seems to be getting worse at times.

[sextons-sweet-deals]

typo correction! I meant 'I don't participate in PL'.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@the-hook-and-the-loop  yes. And clicks are views, so, as I state, ebay is not saying, on average, PLS users see a 25% increase in SALES. If sales was a higher number than views, they'd be touting sales, not views. 

Yes, for PLA they are saying a 50% increase in sales. Again, if PLS as showing a 50% or 25% increase in SALES, ebay would be touting that, just as they are touting the 50% sales with PLA.

So, it is reasonable to conclude that whatever increase in sales ebay provides, on average it is less than 25%.

As for the 50% increase in PLA sales, keep in mind that most PLA sellers sell mutli-quantity listings. Also, for both these stats, sellers need to remember that they are an average, not a promise, and that ebay has no idea what a sellers costs are. a 50% increase in sales is nice, but if the clicks are taking too much from the seller's net, it might not be as great as it sounds (One good thing: the seller has some control over how much he spends for clicks, so a savvy seller can probably make it work well).

But no matter what, it always comes back to the same thing: each seller needs to decide whether it is worth testing, and, if it is, start testing with lower numbers and make sure you know your numbers.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@sextons-sweet-deals  So those Impressions are not the result of a PLS campaign?

[incrediblefinds199]

yeah i feel the same, my views since this all started have gone up significantly, my views yesterday were almost double my best day this month.  I see some people are saying there impressions are low and not getting sales, i skimmed thru to look at what they sell and most of these people that are saying that have limited items/ hard to sell items and have huge gaps with sales, like one or two sales a week. I dont think there issue is with the glitch. 

It does seem as if they MIGHT have improved it but would like a answer from eBay, i am not going to worry at all unless my page views drop. I would like a answer!!! If they did this they should give a answer cause i imagine a lot of people see this and have second thoughts about promoted listings. 

some people think its a scam i seen a comment earlier kind of telling me none of my items are worth promoting, but when i did promote only 2% rate on 3/4 my items and  my sales went up like 30-40%. 

My thoughts would be how do they count impressions. i see people saying how they count them but there is not such info available.

i wonder if you search for something and gives 4 pages if all was counted or not, same with the pages, they load the bottom up with related stuff.  I wonder if they are only counting the ones that are on page and loaded onto the browser. If someone has this info point me to the source of info please!!

Maybe they found a better algo to better suit us.  hope we get a answer soon enough!!! 

[incrediblefinds199]

impressions are how many times your items was posted as a link, like in search if there are 50 results there are 50 impressions, and if one of the items were yours that would be 1 impression, but they also add impressions if there are only like say 6 items after a search result and might show some items that are related. you now when you see a listing and it shows recommended items, those are also impressions. also like on google searches those are 3rd party impressions. 

are you promoting any of your listings? i looked you have over 1600 items and i have not even half that and even with it being low i am averaging about 200k-250k impression per day.  You having only 20k ish, seems like there not promoted.