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]

what a great answer!!! 

[tripleemerchandise]

I noticed the dip on Monday, I do not watch them that closely, but after shipping was reseaarching my next blog article and I said wow, thats low. I run around 1.5 million impressions a day on 140,000 + listings.

On Tuesday I said this is not right, thinking it had something to do with the Trading Card Category new condition requirements that my listings got shadow banned. So I called concierge service, they verified everything on my account was OK.

I noticed where I was no longer at the top of advertising, so I upped my cap 2%, and left pricing the same, and let it run for 2 more days.

Still down 50% in impressions, 60% in sales, I called again. They said they would refer it to technical team, but had no notes on any changes. I had posted on Twitter by this point, and recieved over 50 graphs back and all of us were the same, except PPC seemed to have doubled, while traditional had been cut in half. Albeit, in my category PPC is not profitable, and I had limited graphs.


THey told me I would hear back in 48 hours on Thursday.  I never heard back.

Got in touch with them again today, they seen the notes on my account, and sent a message to my rep, asking for an update. It is beginning to seem like the run around and deliberate, and not holding my breath on getting a call back.

Will give them til Friday and will call again. WIll post any updates.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

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@valueaddedresource   Yet the top of the page says:  

"Metrics are reported in near-real time, allow approximately 72 hours to reconcile. All reporting data will be in your site timezone"

I have never seen a "Tech" company with such a laughably bad idea of what "real time" means.   I remember the other fiasco in which they touted that the dynamic rates were updated in real time.   You & I pushed back & it became clear they had no idea what real time meant.   Now 3 days is "near real time"  😃

FWIW my chart has not changed & was down to 1/2 of normal impressions since the 18th.  It's gone up a bit, but nowhere near normal & the chart has NOT changed. 

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@simply-the-best-for-you agree, it is laughable...mostly in the "you gotta laugh to keep from crying" way. 🤣

If such a big tech company can't pull off anywhere near actual real time data, that's not great but at least be honest about it, right?

Get rid of the "near real time" thing and just lag the traffic and ad reports a few days like they do with the Listing Quality Report where they say something like "The report is generated based on listing status as of Jul 23, 2023 at 12:20am PDT and is updated once every two days."

That at least would set the proper expectation to say "sorry, the best we can do is show you the info from 3 days ago today"....embarassing of course and not ideal, but I'd rather have that than to possibly be shown arbitrary (incorrect) numbers for a few days only to have them revised later after "reconciling" which of course leads to wondering if any of the numbers can really be trusted at all.

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@valueaddedresource  Bravo!  I couldn't have said it better myself!   I'm with you in that I don't care if they can pull off real time data or not (they could if they wanted to), but just label stuff correctly & quit throwing around the phrase "real time" when you CLEARLY have absolutely no idea what it means!   

P.S.  And a part of me jsut can't help but wonder, what on earth do they think it means, kwim?  Rhetorical, of course. 

[incrediblefinds199]

hello, are you charts still the same today, reason why i ask is that, the past couple day and had several days where the the impressions picked up and Sundays page views were high. so i log on and look today and now the charts the past 3 days now have different lower amounts. past Sunday was high on both compared the the last 7 days and now the chart show consistent since this all started last Tuesday/Monday!!! i wish i took pics like you did and curios if you can compare you pics to the chart you have today and see if any of the stuff changed in the past chart. 

[tripleemerchandise]

It takes eBay 72 hours to reconicile the numbers. You often lose numbers during the three days it takes as they weed out bots.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@incrediblefinds199 wrote:

hello, are you charts still the same today, reason why i ask is that, the past couple day and had several days where the the impressions picked up and Sundays page views were high. so i log on and look today and now the charts the past 3 days now have different lower amounts. past Sunday was high on both compared the the last 7 days and now the chart show consistent since this all started last Tuesday/Monday!!! i wish i took pics like you did and curios if you can compare you pics to the chart you have today and see if any of the stuff changed in the past chart. 

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My charts are still the same, but what you're seeing isn't uncommon.  It's what we saw the last 2 times this happened.  They claimed it was just a reporting delay & then the charts got 'fixed'.  Maybe that's what it was, maybe not, no one really knows.  

[incrediblefinds199]

Thanks for the info, never happened to me before this, its been consistent for well over a year.  i am more curious if the person that i replied that to, if there chart is still wack, there chart shows like insane high percentage of off site views/3rd party views. 

I really appreciate people checking in and updating, cause eBay needs to address this or just tell us what is going on. They are telling me there aware of the issue but they said a tech was going to reach out via eBay messages but never did, they also know about this thread cause when i initially talked to them on Facebook about it, they were like were looking into it and we are aware of the community post i made with out even telling them about it. hope they reach out. i am reaching out again via Facebook. 

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@incrediblefinds199 wrote:

Thanks for the info, never happened to me before this, its been consistent for well over a year.  i am more curious if the person that i replied that to, if there chart is still wack, there chart shows like insane high percentage of off site views/3rd party views. 

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@incrediblefinds199  IDK about that person specifically, but I can tell you that some categories regularly see VERY high off site views, whereas others (like mine), it's just a trickle.  Some regulars here see the off-sites at 50% or more on a regular basis & it's just a function of what they sell  & how buyers search in that category. 

[mcdougle4248]

@valueaddedresource 

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@mcdougle4248 wrote:

This past Saturday was very unusual for me. Everything on the graph (except sales) was much higher than normal. The curious thing is that there was a technical issue with variation listings most of the day on Saturday causing my variation listings to lose functionality and unable to produce sales.  I have about 245 listings containing about 1400 items. 20 of those listings are variation listings which contain about 1200 of my 1400 listed items. So I expected the graph for Saturday to look much different than it does regarding impressions and views. No sales were expected considering the technical issue that day.

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@mcdougle4248 interesting, thanks for sharing! Let us know if that changes over the next day or so please. eBay says "72 hours to reconcile" but I've seen it readjust on the 4th day sometimes too.

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Update:  No significant changes to the graph. The only thing I see is 8 more PL impressions recorded.

[lilnbigteamsport]

We have been on Ebay since 2004 and participated in Promoted Listings from the start - it was once a fantastic program!  However our sales have plummeted this year - and Promoted Listings aren't helping at all... we have spoken with the Ebay personnel and noticed the sight reverted back to Time Ending Soonest as the default - which doesn't show promoted listings at all - it has to be Best Match... we don't know what Ebay is trying to do - it seems they have an identity crisis on what type of sight they want to be.. IMHO

[houseful4him]

My sales have tanked as well. 

[tripleemerchandise]

Just got off phone with Supervisors from eBay on issue, they need tickets opened up and was told Upper Management is monitoring.

Which means to me, they made a conscience change to the model, and are seeing how much blowback they get before changing back. 

So go to Seller Help and Request a callback

[ri_fashions]

I have had the same issue. It started 7/18. Promoted impression show they are down 40% but organic are the same & page views are the same as always. Sales are about the same too, I think there’s a good chance it’s a glitch, Earlier this month it showed my impressions on July 5th we’re down 60% for that day only but a week later the bar adjusted & showed it was the same as always, so glitch I believe. When I check traffic tab on phone desktop view it just shows code not the traffic bar. I can only see the traffic bar on my PC. 

[gurlcat]

I do use PLS, so any idea why my promoted impressions didn't drop?  Like if the drops so many people had since the 18th or whatever occurred because of a sitewide change, then wouldn't it affect ALL PLS users? 

[mydadsstuff]

Yep. It started abruptly on 7/17 and I have seen a 40% drop in promoted impressions consistently in the past 11 days. All my listings are promoted at 3%+ and has not changed.