I've always loathed CPC models and beyond the common commercial engines there are others or at least were. I cant recall the names but there were two where the software was completely open source be used in any web and an entire marketplace buy/sell ad's in CPC. Effective CPC at least in past history, I'm sure it's evolved required a rather sustained effort and of course cost of doing biz at least.
The web is always in an evolutionarily mode albeit some evolution is whats old is new again. Whilst many places as they evolve can be pro-active the third party types of marketplaces tend to be in modes or reactive. Understandable as they are poised as venues not being afforded the agility competitors can enjoy.
Driving traffic and converting said traffic into capture be the measure of capture commerce or content go hand in hand. in eCommerce past heat turns up some succeed, heat turns down as many fail. Things have changed now as the web has turned mainstream as integral parts of ever so many traditional retailers. They can take advantage simply because they have more capabilities, more agility and less risk consumer issues such as fraud aside. There's not an entity here in privateers throw $100,000 at focal or not CPC and do the write of yet for really the lions share of hard goods modest sized biz's thats peanuts.
I recall when we'd got Government contracts back in the day and due to them being that we'd no problems at all getting bank lines of credit, was, "How much you want" as the Gov always good on it. When I asked bank officer if it were not for that, in a hard goods business what do they consider as viable. I was surprised, 3-5 million revenues sustained anything else strays into risk assessment variables.
With an eBay or an Etsy there simply is no collective thought, "What is best for all and lets all work towards that" nor can constraints exist to rather force along its path. Now back in the day the B2C venues whom also had many a vendor set down requirement of vendor(s) simply not there, don't fit. It was why so many of them were successful and several even thrived until Amazon's reverse price took off.
Point being success is a multifactorial equation... It takes many parts to facilitate success. Here there are so many conflicting mindsets that competing against traditional medium/large hard good resale entities is simply not accomplishable.
Just as a mock example, if eBay did away with everything but auctions and required $1 start bids along with "No monkey business" sellers this place take off like Space X Rocket in no time flat, no CPC needed. Word of mouth would spread like a wildfire and vendors would leave like wildfire.
This is why sometime back I suggested and it'd never happen, eBay does the selling. Develop an AI, sellers list noting acquisition cost and desired ranging on price. eBay gets it sold, if it doesnt go, it doesnt go, in order to resubmit needs list in a new range below the prior. Todays commerce is all about driving value for consumers. One can have the California Interstate Five of traffic but if the sum of the parts are not conducive to capture, value, safety, confidence et el then that traffic can never maximize potentials.
If I were at the helm, be a whole bunch of changes here and that's easy to say. The reality is however changes that could and actually should occur cant and the reason they cant is "When you really wave the bedsheets hard the bed bugs fly all over you and will do anything to destroy as they feel destroyed."
