eBay Germany Ditches Promoted Listings Express For Auctions - Will US Follow?
Interesting update from eBay Germany - they are discontinuing Promoted Listings Express for Auctions effective July 12 and will be folding auctions in to existing Promoted Listings Standard instead.
I've always suspected the steep upfront fees with no guarantee of sale would be an insurmountable obstacle to adoption for PL Express. Looks like eBay has finally figured that out too and is pivoting to the "safer" cost per sale model for auctions instead of a stand alone ad product.
https://www.ebayads.de/2023/07/06/anzeigen-standard-jetzt-auch-fur-ebay-auktions-angebote-verfugbar/
(translation by Google)
There's news for all eBay sellers: there's a new way to drive more traffic to your auction listings. Ads Express will be discontinued on July 12 , 2023. Sellers who sell in auctions and want to use Express campaigns or implement ads can then use Ads Standard: the improved, easy-to-use tool for promoting listings across the eBay network.
Advertise more types of offers with standard ads
With Ads Standard, you can direct buyers to auctions and Buy It Now offerslead. Easy-to-setup ads that produce compelling results help your offerings stand out from the crowd. With more listing types to advertise, you can continue to convince potential buyers to make a purchase while increasing the visibility of your listings across the eBay network, regardless of how they're sold.
Present your auction listings to the right buyers across the eBay network and track performance. You only pay when an item sells. We've listened to your feedback about upfront fees: you now only pay when you sell a promoted item. There are no upfront fees - so you can stick to the budget you set yourself.
As far as I can tell this only applies to eBay Germany at this time, but if the test is successful in getting sellers to opt auctions in to PL Standard, I'm sure it will be expanded to the other sites "soon".
gurlcat
·3 years agoWell I guess I'm the odd man out here, because I LOVE PLE and hope it doesn't go away. I mean, I guess I could see why some people would dislike it if they list things that won't get bids, then it would be a waste of money. But the only things I put up for auction are ones I KNOW will get bids, so paying only $.99 - $2.99 to get my listing shown on other listings 'View Item' pages DEFINITELY increases that items views, watchers, bidders, and winning bids. I absolutely adore it. But it disappearing would be typical, as everything I think is great never lasts, ha.
valueaddedresource
OP3 years ago@gurlcat out of curiosity, if you could opt auctions into a regular Promoted Listings Standard pay per sale campaign at a percentage ad rate, would you prefer that over the current PLExpress model of paying a flat upfront fee?
That's what they are doing in Germany - I'd be really interested to hear since you are happy with the current option if you think the PLS model would be better or worse and why.
gurlcat
·3 years agoLOL, well you tell me which you would rather have for something like this. Starting bid of $25. 48 bids. Cost me $1.99. So how much promotion would I get for two bucks? Oh wait, I couldn't even do it because 1% would be $2.50, and you have to buy at least 2% now.
gurlcat
·3 years agoOh wait, that one cost me only $1.49, because I ran it only 5 days! And look - 774 VIEWS! I mean, this lot would have gotten lots of views anyway, but not anywhere near THAT many. Nor that high of a winning bid. PLE has been a godsend to me.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@gurlcat Your use of PLE is a good example of why I recommend sellers test their way into any Promoted Listings. You obviously tried and it worked for you, but as you say, using it on stuff that might or might not get bids can end up being an unnecessary expense. And using it on items that are likely to sell but only bring in , say, more than ten or twenty dollars, is not a great strategy, because sometimes the fee is too high to justify that. So, just as with PLS, test it and figure what works and what doesn't.
This is also one reason why I wish ebay would provide more advice ---make it clear that this can be a good tool, but best used in certain situations. (Same as PLA, which has limited value for most one off type items.)
I have tried it a couple times, without success, although it might have brought me more watchers (as with PLS, it can be hard to know whether an item would have sold as well without it.). I have two auctions running right now, but they aren't guaranteed sales like your jewelry, and niether will likely bring larger sums. I might try it on the print, but I'll wait a few more days, since the ad fee usually declines as time goes on.
have you ever looked to see just what sort of placement the fee gets you? is it only on the search page, or other pages as well?
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@gurlcat @valueaddedresource
Also, it occurs to me that, while ebay hasn't given out actual numbers , ebay has indicated low adoption for PLE. Which may mean your success-- in part --is for the same reason that early PLS beta adopters saw great success: their competitors weren't using it. Those using PLE might be in that sort of sweet spot right now----the benefit you are getting might be reduced quickly if a lot more sellers started using PLE.
(So, use it now, before either ebay takes it away or ebay ramps up efforts to get more sellers to use it.)
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoPer ebay: "You can reach new buyers with ads for your auction item! Listings got on average 220% more impressions with Promoted Listings Express. (Data from Apr – Sep 2022)"
Also:
"Auctions that used Promoted Listings Express got an average of 52% more views when promoted.*
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@gurlcat, I just checked, and ebay says nothing about the search results page but says " Listings promoted with Promoted Listings Express will have access to sponsored placements on listing pages of similar listings."
Is that what you have been seeing? That PLEs are part of the clutter on the view item page?
gurlcat
·3 years agoYes, it never claimed to place auctions higher in search results, on only in the scroll-down of items in the same or similar categories. Yes I absolutely see my auctions on other sellers' jewelry listing pages, sometimes 2 or more times on the same page. That's another thing that might not work for some people because jewelry is by nature a visual thing and jewelry buyers are like kids in a candy store, lol. I myself have clicked on so many thumbnails I saw on others' listings, and fairly often BUY them, and/or check out the seller's other listings. So it didn't surprise me at all when I saw it making a big difference for my auctions immediately.
But also yes, I have always suspected or at least wondered if it does me so much good because few other jewelry auctioneers are trying it (yet). I remember after using it a couple of times I made a post here in the Community forums about how much I liked it ...... but I sure don't spread the word in any of the online jewelry groups I'm in, ha.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoSo the main difference between PLE and PLS is you pay a flat up front fee, but they both show up on other seller's listing pages (and PLS shows up on other pages as well). I've seen some fairly high up front fees, but category seems to be a factor, and it looks like ebay keeps jewelry fairly low.
You've inspired me to play around with it again....I'll try to find some items I think would be good auction candidates this week. You are in a niche where you know you will do well even with a low starting price..is that right? Do you usually start your auctions pretty low?
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoI just made my print auction a PLE. Might not have been a good choice for this item, but I'm willing to pay $1.99 to test it. One thing I didn't know when I tried this before....did you know you can monitor the ad's performance? Apparently you can't do it from your PC, but you can do it from the ebay app. Have you used that?
"You can monitor your listing’s performance from the eBay app by selecting “View ad report†from the item menu of a listing promoted with Promoted Listings Express."
joliztoyco
·3 years agoeBay Germany is a small slice of eBay's total sellers ( 15% as of 2022) , and THEIR management has been trying to implement ideas that will reverse the loss of sellers, active users, and GMV.
They actually did away with FVF's for small sellers!!
"Selling items on eBay.de will be free for private sellers from March 1, 2023. Private sellers then pay neither a listing fee nor a sales commission when they sell on eBay.de. The change also applies to offers that were already posted on eBay before March 1, 2023 and have not yet been sold.
Why are we doing this? We know that fees have been the biggest hurdle for private sellers to sell on eBay. The change in fees not only means an attractive opportunity for additional income for private sellers, but also a wider range of inexpensive and used items on eBay.de. This allows consumers to save when shopping on the eBay marketplace in economically challenging times and at the same time give used things a second life." (3-1-2023)
But don't think for one second that will ever transfer over to the "cash cow" crop of U.S. sellers.
We are nothing but ATM's to eBay.
As of 2022 about 12% of eBay's sellers WERE in China. In 6 months TEMU has destroyed that market by stealing almost every large/bulk seller from eBay. The loss of revenue is staggering.
They'll have to make up that up somewhere.
Buckle up, my fellow ATMers....this should get interesting.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoThe various ebay sites do not always do the same thing, and it is entirely possible that this change will not come to the USA. The reason I suspect it will is because I think PLE has probably had poor adoption here as well as in Germany, and because auctions are a fertile field for PLS to plow, which could result in more Ad revenue. Because Germany is smaller, they can do this there and find out if they can move auction users into PLS at a large enough rate to increase overall ad revenue. If that happens in Germany, then I think we'll see it come here.
Another difference between some of the other sites and this one is that they actually market the site as a whole, and not just the Focus Categories. Obviously, I'd welcome that approach coming here as well, but have less confidence in that happening.
reallynicestamps
·3 years agoIf the 15% of sellers who use dotDE are a "small slice" then surely the 12% in China are a risible number and totally unimportant.
You can't have it both ways.
And the dotDE sellers are all over Europe and selling in the common currency of the world's third largest economy, the European Union.
In 2017, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the European Union with 27 Member States (EU) represented 16.0% of world GDP, expressed in Purchasing Power Standards (PPS). China and the United States were the two largest economies, with shares of 16.4% and 16.3% respectively.
This was pre-Brexit of course.
joliztoyco
·3 years agoYou seem to miss the point:
Running experimental models on 15% of your sellers is entirely feasible without taking a large financial loss.
Losing the majority of the sales of those 12% IS a huge financial loss.
You do realize that what's happening to the eBay sellers on Germany's platform will have few( if any) effects on the US sellers.
But what's happening to the sellers on China's could have severe ramifications for U.S. sellers??
valueaddedresource
OP3 years ago@joliztoyco I agree with you that the no fee selling for private/consumer sellers in Germany is not likely to make it to the US any time soon, but that's irrelevant to this conversation, as is whether or not Temu is taking a significant share of China sellers away from eBay.
As to the actual topic of this thread - Promoted Listings Express for Auctions - I do think it's very likely what has been announced for the German marketplace will make its way to the US and sitewide globally in the not too distant future.
Since eBay is clearly already devoting money and resources to figuring out how to fold auctions into Promoted Listings Standard, you can 100% bet they will want to milk that for every penny and will expand it globally once they test it and get it dialed in on .DE.
And I've seen nothing to convince me that any other market has seen a significant enough adoption rate for PLExpress to make it worth continuing to support it in some regions but not others.
It makes sense they may want to slow roll the wind down and not pull the plug immediately across the board, especially before Q2 earnings, but PLExpress as a whole is on very short borrowed time, in my opinion.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@valueaddedresource Agree 100%. In the US, they might decide to pull the plug in time for ebay Open: "Good news, auction sellers! Now you can enjoy all the benefits of Promoted Listings Standard!" LOL
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoOops. Forgot to add: "You spoke, we listened!"
nuclearomen
·3 years agoPLS is the only method they should have, period. There are not enough sellers either willing or can do PLA in the ratio of sellers on this site, have it, fine, but PLS was, still is and will be the preferred method. In to date view, getting rid of the method isn't as important now and canning the PLD - the "dynamic" and their suggested rates are what is really out of control. Sometimes, things made super simplified will perform better then expectations things made overly technical for what they need to do. PLS, with a universal cap of round 7 to 8% would likely go over fine with most sellers using PLS, still elect lower by choice but they still get some inflation on the cap option. Anyways... whatever.
Auctions shouldn't need any PL, since auctions perform by ending dates and are generally searched for via ending soonest, the item and current bid price should be doing the "promotion" on their own.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@nuclearomen I sell long tail items. The value in PLS for those types of items is not found on the search page. If a buyer does a fairly tight search, my items will come up. The value is that many of my items , because they are long tail, aren't necessarily being searched for with any frequency. But they can sell from the "other" pages , much like candy sells at the checkout counter. (And ebay has said that the large majority of PLS dales do come from the other pages, not from the search page.) So PLS for auctions still makes sense. Someone might not be searching for my long tail widget, but if they see it on a listing page and say "Hey, that's cool" and bid on it, I've made the sale. In that sense, it's no different than GTC listings. I've said this many times, for long tail stuff like mine, search is good, but so is browsing, which is what having the items on non-search pages amounts to.
As to the Suggested Rates? What is really out of control is that far too many sellers using PLS do not use it wisely. I don't need ebay to cap PLS at a certain amount. I cap it. If ebay recommends 15%, I don't worry about it. I see way too many sellers who think the smart thing to do is to put all their listings in a campaign at the recommended rate (or above that). In most cases, that is, I'll be blunt, just plain stupid. Sellers need to think strategically.
PLS is a tool. You can choose to use it or not. But you can also choose to use it wisely... or not wisely.
nuclearomen
·3 years ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wisely or not wisely is vague in terms of PL's are strategy. There has never been any explanation from ebay on information how to use PL's "wisely", there has never been any insight to the tool at all other then them telling what methods there are and how they are charged. There is no real strategy to PL's anyways, though many feel there is and tell people to elect only particular items into a campaign. The only strategy to PL is the more of a item in a particular category there is in the campaign the more likely sales will be from that campaign. PLs go by category, if you have 1 or 2 items in a category in campaign the likeliness of that sponsored ad being shown is near nothing compared to sellers who have hundreds/thousands of items in same category sponsored whose sponsored ads you will likely see on a lot more listings in the category you visit. You, me, anyone else may pay no attention to their suggested rates, but those suggested rates are controlling how often your sponsored ads get shown.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@nuclearomen Griff has discussed strategy on his podcast. Strategy has been discussed at ebay Open etc. But the bottom line is: Strategies will vary from seller to seller. It is up to EACH seller to figure out how best to use the tool (IF they decide to use it at all).
When you say there is no real strategy, I'm frankly baffled. It suggests to me that you haven't really figured out any sort of strategy for your business, but that doesn't mean other sellers haven't found strategies that work for their business.
A basic rule of thumb: A higher rate will probably lead to more impressions.
More impressions will not necessarily lead to more sales.
So, I could choose 50%, and yes, that would probably get me more impressions than, say, 10%. But would it get me more sales? Not necessarily. But one thing it would do---assuming my item price was the same---is it would drastically reduce my profit (or eliminate it entirely). So why would I use it? I wouldn't.
There's nothing wrong with using the suggested rates....IF they actually work for you. If they drive sales, if they work within your margins, fine. But the algo doesn't know your margins. The algo doesn't know your goals for the campaign. And the PLS campaign means an increase in impressions, not necessarily sales.
A campaign at 5% might be just as effective as one at 15%. As Griff says: don't give ebay money you don't need to give.
nuclearomen
·3 years agoI get sales because of the simple fact I don't sit there and pretend there is some strategy to something that will gain the same results no matter what "strategy" one does. This has been proven time and time again with sellers such as me conversing with others sellers both on boards and private whom sell in completely different categories, have completely different customer bases, yet campaigns perform nearly the same in all cases, lows and highs on the same dates, for the same time lengths regardless of election amounts or items. Been doing these comparisons for over a year now. The only thing that varies seller to seller is amount of sales per day is never consistent seller to seller...thankfully, cause it shouldn't of course.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@nuclearomen If you are satisfied with your sales, then don't worry about strategy would be my advice. Just keep doing what works.
nuclearomen
·3 years agoidk know what works / doesn't work anymore, use to be easy in hine sight, it's gotten more "complicated" i would say. That could be ton of things, the site, the algo's, the buyer base, the economy, the amount of sponsored ads, the election rates, the color of the sky.... any guess is game at this point. I know one thing as certain, I refused to elect their "trending" rates when they were called that, and I refuse to elect their "suggested" rates as they call them now. I make sales, if i make some less then OK, but I didn't give these freaks all my profit for it. 😆
reallynicestamps
·3 years agoThere has never been any explanation from ebay on information how to use PL's "wisely",
There is.
EBay's suggestions are always good for eBay.
Once we understand that eBay is not our friend but our landlord, most of the HQ decisions fall into place.
valueaddedresource
OP3 years ago@nuclearomen this is where things have gone wrong for eBay PL, in my opinion - they have backed themselves into a corner where PLS alone is simply not an option.
eBay has faced serious pressure from investors who were not/are not satisfied with the revenue that was being generated from PLS, which is what has driven them to throw all these new and different ad products against the wall hoping something will stick.
The only thing that "makes sense" out of PLExpress to me is it was a product designed around what they thought they needed to show to Wall Street rather than any consideration for how buyers and sellers actually use auctions on the site and what forms of advertising would be most readily adopted (otherwise they would have just added it to PLS to begin with, again in my opinion).
Not sure if hubris really did convince them the upfront flat fee wouldn't be an insurmountable obstacle or if they knew it would flop but felt like they had to "do something" for appearances to try to buy time but either way - here we are.
eBay has made certain projections and predictions not just about how much revenue they believe they can generate with ads, but how they intend to do it. Investors want to see that eBay can grow beyond the cost per sale model and it seems like they may be starting to get impatient as eBay isn't making significant progress on the plans they laid out at Investor Day last year.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@valueaddedresource I have always thought there was some sort of rationale for PLE, with ebay having come to the conclusion that the differences between auctions and GTC required a significantly different approach. There might even be some validity to that point, but whatever the case, PLE never made sense from Day 1----not as a specifically "auction" type of PL, nor as a serious revenue enhancer for ebay. I tried to make sense of it---and who knows, maybe if the fee was known in advance, before the seller actually began the listing process, or maybe if the fee bore some rational connection to the item's perceived value, maybe it could have made sense. But it was a hot mess from Day One, and I don't think ebay ever did anything to try to improve it.
I agree with you that ebay made promises to the shareholders about the future growth of Ad Revenue, and I think those rosy projections are not on track. I'm sure ebay---internally---knows where they need that revenue to be to meet the goal they promised for 2025, and I think they are struggling to meet it. PLS continues to be the workhorse. I don't know what their expectations were for PLE, but I doubt they even came close to those projections. And I strongly suspect PLA has been a big disappointment, despite recent efforts to streamline it and so forth. Pay Per Click was never intended for sellers like me, with single quantity long tail items, but I suspect even most of the multi-quantity sellers of newer items haven't adopted it. Some of those who had experience with PPC (from other sites) might be using it, because they are confident they know how it use it effectively. But for many sellers, it's too much effort and too much risk with too little clear upside.
That leaves PLS. The last three major changes to PLS have all signaled to me that ebay has been having trouble meeting its goals. Doubling the minimum fee? Applying the fee to the total price, rather than the item price? And, of course, the halo fee. NONE of these benefit sellers in any way. ALL are designed to increase revenue from PLS, but , while they might have increased the revenue amount on each sale, they may have---probably did---reduce the number of listings actually being put into campaigns, and the rates many sellers are choosing. So, they may have made changes that have resulted in ebay basically treading water revenue wise, and antagonizing the sellers they need to produce that revenue. And of course, if they fold auctions into PLS, it's the same idea---find a way to extend he reach of PLS to keep increasing the revenue, even if they are doing so without really increasing sales.
I don't think this would be a major stockholder---or even seller concern---if were were seeing serious GMV growth. If sales were going up and up (and not just in the essentially heavily- subsidized- by- the- rest -of- us
Focus Categories, there would be fewer complaints. Sellers, and stockholders, will put up with a lot when sales are increasing nicely.
But that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing a company that can't figure out how to jump start its GMV growth, and there's nothing in the development pipeline that holds any real promise of growing GMV. First party Ads grow revenue (and aren't even doing that very well) , but they aren't growing GMV.
They can't drop First party ads because they contribute too much revenue and because they've made promises...in fact, they are more likely to keep doubling down on Ads in order to meet those stated goals. And, while it would probably be smart to broaden their approach and not rely so heavily on Focus Categories, they have no fresh ideas for doing that.
nuclearomen
·3 years ago@valueaddedresource said this before, but say it again, they got greedy with PL's, introduced to many methods. The PL Auction was dumb to begin with, getting rid of it in one country may not say anything particular for the rest but it's a sign to me telling they are seeing how these PL methods are flopping and going south. Only hope is the rest follow suit, but who knows, nice to hope.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@nuclearomen I wouldn't get my hopes up. I suspect it's safe to say that PLE was a flop, in part because it was ill conceived from the start, which I think was obvious to pretty much everyone but ebay. I can usually come up with what I think is a valid explanation for WHY ebay does this or that (even when I disagree with what they are doing), but PLE was simply a mystery to me.
But here's my guess: ebay has said many times that PLS is the real workhorse of the Ads. In other words, from ebay's perspective, PLS is a success and PLE a flop, so roll the auctions into PLS to make PLS even more of a success.
I don't use auctions often, but if I were running an auction, I'd be much more inclined to use a PLS type ad tool than PLE, and ebay is obviously betting that's true of other auctions sellers as well.
valueaddedresource
OP3 years agoAnd now it looks like they've pushed it back to August 7.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoMaybe they didn't want to actually do it until after the Q2 Report has been made. Or more likely they realized they weren't yet ready to start transferring auctions to PLS. Or maybe someone simply posted the wrong date the first time, and with ebay's famed traditional reluctance to proofread anything, well, here we are. LOL
I do see where they have also officially taken PLA out of Beta. So, if the PLE changes comes to the US, we'll end up with PLS and PLA and whatever they decide to call the Display Ads which they've been testing.
While ebay has never given a detailed breakdown, they have acknowledged in the last few quarters that PLS accounts for most of the First Party Ad revenue. I always assumed PLE was the smallest segment, in part because there are far more fixed price listings, and in part because paying a non-refundable up front fee----a fee with no set amount, and the amount of which rarely seemed tethered in any sort of reality---was bound to be met with low adoption.
I think auctions account for, what, maybe 20% or so of ebay's listings? Assuming that PLE never penetrated very far to begin with, I can see where ebay is now looking at all those never advertised auctions and thinking that they've found a new way to increase PLS, again, without actually increasing overall sales...they've juts found a way to attach PLS fees to more listings (assuming auction sellers are more receptive to PLS than to PLE)
So, I agree, it is going to be interesting to see how they fold this into PLS...and interesting to see if the change comes to this site as well.
(I could see this as something they might announce at ebay Open)
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoThe only surprise is that it took so long.
valueaddedresource
OP3 years ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques totally agree.
It will be interesting to see how auctions get integrated into PL Standard - it seems like it should be pretty straightforward but I'm going to wait until we see it in action before making too much of a judgement call about it.
In my opinion they should have just done that to begin with, but they didn't ask me. 😂
Beyond that, it will be interesting to see what reaction eBay will get from Wall Street - PL Express was one of the shiny new "exciting" opportunities that eBay pushed at Investor Day in 2022 and I'm sure it's going to sting a bit to have to admit it was a total failure.
It could also raise some serious questions about friction/seller hesitancy on *any* ad products that aren't a cost per sale model and whether or not eBay's projections for ad revenue from cost per click products are realistic.