Compare Items In Search
Yesterday, I noticed an update to eBay's Marketing Terms that mentioned something called "Item Compare" that sounded like a new feature being added into search that could end up triggering ad attribution for sellers who use Promoted Listings.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/eBay-Marketing-Terms-Update-2-2-2026/td-p/35467257
I did a little more digging after finding out it was being launched in Electronics categories and found an example, for anyone who's interested in how Item Compare works.
Basically, when the buyer does a search for an Electronics item, eBay adds a "Compare" toggle at the top of the results.
When the toggle is switched "on", a module pops up with spots to add up to 3 items with check boxes on the right side to select listings to compare.
Once you populate 2-3 items and click "compare", a pop up screen shows details from all the items side by side. From this view, if you click on one of the item thumbnails it will take you to that specific listing if you want to see more or purchase the item.
In my early testing, it seems like eBay is still working out some kinks as far as pulling and displaying accurate info.
In this example, the first 2 items don't show any description in the Compare module.
But those items do have seller provided descriptions, so I'm not sure why eBay wasn't able to populate those fields.
Same with items that don't allow returns - for some reason eBay just puts a "-" instead of saying no returns accepted.
Honestly I found this initial experience pretty disappointing - I expected eBay would likely be using AI for this as this kind of product comparison is a natural use case for that technology, but instead it entirely relies on buyers manually selecting items and even then it doesn't display all the relevant data properly.
Hopefully it will get better over time but the bare bones functionality coupled with the Marketing Terms update make it pretty clear to me this is more about increasing ad revenue potential than improving buyer experience.
TLDR on the Marketing Terms update: when you use Promoted Listings Priority cost per click or General cost per sale ads and your item is shown as Sponsored in search, if a user toggles this option on and clicks the checkbox to add your item to compare, that counts as a click for ad attribution - even if they never actually view your full item page.
valueaddedresource
OP7 months agoAlso FYI for our members in other countries, it looks like Marketing Terms for UK, Canada, and Australia have been updated with pretty much the same language, including references to "item compare", so I'd say it's safe to assume these are global changes and if those other markets aren't seeing the Compare option yet, they will be soon.
https://pages.ebay.co.uk/promote-your-listings/terms/B2C/
https://pages.ebay.ca/sell/pl/termsofservice.html
https://pages.ebay.com.au/sell/pl/termsofservice.html
valueaddedresource
OP7 months ago@tobaccocardyahoo as far as "improve over time" I just meant that eBay will likely eventually sort out whatever issues are currently causing them not to be able to pull data and display it in this Compare module for some listings.
Again, whether it ultimately ends up being useful to buyers in helping them make purchase decisions isn't really the point of this post.
Rehashing whether or not it's a good idea for sellers to use ads more broadly was also not the point - the point was simply to bring awareness to those who do use ads that eBay has added a new feature which also introduces a new buyer action that can count for ad attribution.
valueaddedresource
OP7 months ago@tobaccocardyahoo that's fair, but there's a reason I put this in the selling board - I wasn't really trying to assess the usefulness of the feature for buyers to that granularity (otherwise I would have put more effort into actually picking examples that would have fit more with how a buyer might use it).
On the buyer side, my interest was simply in determining if the basic functionality of the feature actually works - which as I showed is not consistent since eBay appears to have trouble pulling in some of the data.
To be clear, I see those data issues even when I try it using items that are the same model too, so that doesn't really have anything to do with it and I don't think it's wrongheaded to point that out, but opinions may differ.
But the more important part of this post is letting sellers know that this is now active for at least some searches and that it could have serious implications for them.....especially for those who use Promoted Listings, because of the changes that were made to the Marketing Terms yesterday.
Ultimately whether it ends up being useful or not to the buyer in making a purchase decision isn't my main concern at this point and will probably get better over time - the real concern is that if the buyer tries it out using a listing that is Promoted/Sponsored, it will count as a click for ad attribution and the seller will pay the applicable ad fee.
For Priority Cost Per Click ads, that means the click on the checkbox to add an item to Compare will cost the seller whatever the per click fee is if it was shown as a Sponsored result.
For General Cost Per Sale ads, that means the click on the checkbox to add the item to Compare will start the 30 day clock ticking whereby if any buyer purchases that item, the seller will be charged the ad fee (assuming the item is still in an ad campaign at the time of purchase).
tobaccocardyahoo
·7 months ago@valueaddedresource
IMO the change in the fees for general ads is a blessing to sellers, if they come to realize this is a cost which may or may not give them any benefit.
Promotion benefits a relatively small number of listings, provides the most benefit to listings which are available in effectively unlimited quantities, with sellers of multiples. In production, mass market products.
The new fee structure has already led to many sellers with shallow inventories ceasing to promote. And it is still to soon to see the effects and whether sellers will adapt effectively. Some sellers who use promotion indiscriminately will be punished for their lack of strategic thinking, hopefully before they do themselves permanent damage. Others will probably do themselves damage.
If a buyer is comparing multiple listings, the buyer is going to trigger the fee whether he uses this feature or not.
IMO this feature will not improve with time. The sponsored ads on Ebay are not well targeted to Ebay listings, and they have not improved. The difficulties in targeting them are fundamental to Ebay and make it far more difficult than the Amazon catalog system to get right. This feature is closely tied to these issues.
The classic "flea bay" nickname has a lot of validity. Were we to implement Ebay in a huge warehouse, it would look more like a flea market, than it would look like Costco or Walmart. I frequented a flea market once held in a Walmart warehouse for years, and although I loved it, it did not look or feel like a retail store.
tobaccocardyahoo
·7 months agoThe reason the comparison is so bad is that some of the sellers did not fill in all of the item specifics.
The description is not being used for the compare.
Maybe now those sellers will have a reason to fill in the item specifics, but I doubt it.
valueaddedresource
OP7 months ago@tobaccocardyahoo that is not correct, look at the screenshots again.
All three of the listings in my example had item specifics filled in and you can see all of them show that in the comparison section for item specifics.
For the section for the description, all three actual listings do have seller provided descriptions, but eBay is only pulling the text from the third one.
Again look at the screenshots - for the first listing, eBay shows "-" for the description in the comparison, but I also included an image of the actual listing page showing it does have text in the description.
Also in the description section of the comparison, the one item it does pull a description for, that is directly from the description field in that listing, so no it is not pulling from the item specifics there.
Same with the returns section - the two where eBay shows "-" in the comparison show "Seller does not accept returns" on the actual listing pages, so the data is there in the listing, eBay just isn't displaying it correctly.
The data/display issues I called out are definitely an eBay problem, not a seller problem.
tobaccocardyahoo
·7 months ago@valueaddedresource The comparison you show of three different Apple models is pretty useless. I assume there are feature differences which are not recorded. And as we all know, these models will differ in time to obsolescence due to iOS update limitations.
This feature is designed by idiots for idiots. The buyers who will use it are buyers who will buy the cheapest product and complain when it no longer works with the apps they use.
valueaddedresource
OP7 months ago@tobaccocardyahoo "The comparison you show of three different Apple models is pretty useless."
Ok, but that's not what you initially said - I was only responding because what you said previously was patently incorrect, as shown by my original post.
In my effort to test and get screenshots this morning, I just selected the first three results because it was easy and I'm lazy 😂 - a buyer actually doing this search would likely have selected 3 that were the same model if that was something important to them.
Either way, none of what you said in this response has anything to do with the main point I was responding to from your previous post which was that the problem of the comparison module missing or being unable to display certain data appears to be on the eBay side, not due to any laziness on the part of the seller.
tobaccocardyahoo
·7 months ago@valueaddedresource
It is not what I initially said.
I reflected and decided that your criticism and my criticism of the feature were wrong-headed.
It is downright useless in this case. If a buyer chooses to use it to compare apples and oranges it is idiotic, but to be expected on Ebay.
It could be useful if used to compare two of the same model.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·7 months ago@valueaddedresource
Thanks for the update on this. I'm not seeing it on my PC with Chrome. Might be a "phased roll out"?
valueaddedresource
OP7 months ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques I'm not seeing it in every search for electronics items but was able to see it for these search terms on a PC in Chrome and FireFox both when logged in and not logged in/in incognito:
iphone 17 pro max
lenovo thinkpad
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·7 months ago@valueaddedresource Tried both. No luck. Gotta run, maybe I'll try incognito when I return.
valueaddedresource
OP7 months ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques interesting. I tried signed into another account as well and am seeing it there too. So yeah, if you aren't seeing it, I'd say it may be a phased rollout or they are a/b testing it for certain searches.
I'm seeing it pretty consistently searching for specific brands of phones and laptops/tablets, but not seeing it for things that are more like accessories like a mouse or keyboard or headphones etc.
pls-consignments
·7 months agoYep, anything eBay has implemented with these new features is ad revenue driven. HOWEVER, full disclosure should have prompted eBay to inform sellers BEFORE implementing future features that would affect ad attribution for those using Promoted Listings. Surprise!