Notice something with Promoted listing impressions dropped significantly after raising but.....
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
OP3 years agoA small update, yesterday morning seemed the same when i looked at the chart and then late night i looked and was high again, bit lower than normal but at least 50% more than the past 10 days or so. Now Today i noticed its already had a significant amount of impressions on the chart and its almost at what it ends at, so i am hoping it will be floating between 300k-400k again.
But as i mentioned, sales have been the same and views as well, had some days were the chart changed overnight but i think that had to do with the lol REAL TIME 72HR!!!
one thing i noticed that was quite odd and in both views and impressions, last week i had 3 days in a row were the impressions were within 1k impressions between the days. it typically floats around much more than that, also views 3 days in a row the numbers were like 1 off from each other each day. so odd but i guess it could happen.
So i hope with what i see, that the charts and everything can go back to normal. I hope that the people that are loosing sales things will pick up for you, summer for me is always a bit slow but sales for this time of year are the same. page views have not changed much through this glitch (if that is what it is) but for me charts are important sometimes when doing research, technical analysis is impossible without proper chart info!!!
valueaddedresource
·3 years ago@incrediblefinds199 glad to hear your impressions are coming back up.
It appears eBay started a test on/around July 18 that removed many of the PL ads from the View Item page in some browsers/situations.
Coincidentally, that test appears to now be ended and we're starting to see more reports like yours indicating they are coming back up.
Details:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Anyone-else-seeing-these-changes-to-Promoted-Listings-on-View/m-p/33900312/highlight/true#M2252639
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoThanks for keeping up with this @valueaddedresource . I mentioned the PLS test as a possible cause back on the 19th---I just checked--- it was the first response to the OP in this thread LOL ,but I was just speculating, and of course, we still are to some extent, since we don't know how widespread the test was or whether other factors might have ben involved...and unless ebay finally responds, we will probably never know for sure. But I agree....for now at least...it's the best theory we have.
IF we are right, then ebay is in an interesting spot:
1. Many sellers complained that there were way too many PLS listings on the View Item Page. Many demanded ebay remove them.
2. ebay tests heavily reducing the number of PLS listings on a view item page, with the result that impressions and, for at least some, sales plummet, and ....sellers complain.
It's a conundrum. Sellers want all the impressions and sales, but they don't want the listing page filled with the PLS listings that appear to produce many of those impressions and sales.
Can ebay find a middle ground?
(Of course, this all assumes that the PLS test---still never confirmed by ebay----caused the impressions/sales problem, which itself has apparently never been confirmed by ebay.)
So, as usual, I'm left wondering whether ebay's dictionary defines "transparency" and "seller engagement" the same way mine does.....
valueaddedresource
·3 years ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques as you alluded to, I think the biggest thing here is - communication, or lack thereof.
You're spot on about the conundrum this raises (assuming we're correct about this being a test and being the reason for the drop) but I also think it wouldn't be nearly so much of a conundrum if eBay had simply bothered to have the smallest amount of respect for sellers and communicated about what they were doing.
Had sellers known eBay was testing removing most of the PL ads and that it might impact impression statistics, many sellers may have been very happy about it or at least been willing to ride out any drops in impressions in the hope it might lead to a better, more balanced outcome for the final design of the View Item page.
I think the strong reaction to the falling impressions was precisely because sellers had/have no idea what is going on and a little bit of "seller engagement" and "transparency" would have gone a long way toward calming concerns and avoiding panic....but I'm not going to hold my breath eBay will learn anything from this just as they never seem to learn from any of the other communication failures over the years that have led to unnecessary stress and headaches for both users and their own support staff.
My fear now is that eBay will misinterpret the negative response to the drops to say "see, we have to keep the ads in" when in reality the response may have been quite different if they had handled things differently.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@valueaddedresource Exactly: How anyone from the Community Team can say the word "transparency" with a straight face, I don't know. This communication failure has existed as long as I've been on ebay, and every time I get some little hope that they've learned from their failures, they manage to dash my hopes against the rocks of their complacency and obstinance.
As you say, we should have been warned rom the get go....but the least they can do now is tell us what happened. But we'll probably be left to guess.
continentalcollectibles
·3 years agoNo, Believe me, it's not just you... We too have all Our Listings Promoted and recently they didn't drop a little they cratered we have like 20,500 active listings and every one of them are Promoted. and our sales almost stopped we consistently sell 20-30 items a day on our slow days but now the only thing that continues is people putting items on their watch list but no one is purchasing anything even when you send offers which we send over 200 a day out. I always loved Promoted Listing in fact our sales went up 40 percent once we started Promoting, Hang in there hopefully they fix the problem
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoI thought your name looked familiar i think i have you saved lol, but i took a look and for some reason when i clicked on your store it said you had 1000+ and then backed out and was like wait that person said they had way more than that, i clicked in from the store and said 1000 but if i click next to profile items for sale, it shows it in the non store format, that says 20k+. id maybe have someone you know see if it shows up like it did for me. maybe thats standard 1000 plus for store view, figured id let you know. i am going to give a update on whats going on, on my end!! my sales have been relatively the same. last night and today i noticed something on the charts. check out my next message.
mydadsstuff
·3 years agoYep. 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.
tripleemerchandise
·3 years agoJust 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
lilnbigteamsport
·3 years agoWe 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
tripleemerchandise
·3 years agoI 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.
redlinear
·3 years agoCan I buy groceries with impressions?
lpreowned_is_the_new_newl
·3 years agoThe round about answer is...yes. If I have a "physical store" and someone walks in the door, does a quick 360 and then walks out, that's an impression. If another person walks in my store, does a quick 360, but then walks over to one of my items and picks it up, that action was initially generated by an impression, but now the action is a view. The customer then walks to the register and buys it, that's a sale. Both of these scenarios BEGAN as an impression. When I'm buying something, I'll set my search up to look at 200 items. I just gave 200 people an impression, maybe 5 with a view, and 1 with a sale. In conclusion... No impressions no groceries.
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agowhat a great answer!!!
mcdougle4248
·3 years agoThis 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.
valueaddedresource
·3 years ago@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.
mcdougle4248
·3 years ago@valueaddedresource
Update: No significant changes to the graph. The only thing I see is 8 more PL impressions recorded.
sextons-sweet-deals
·3 years agoHelp 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
·3 years agothe 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
·3 years ago@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
·3 years agomy-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@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.
lpreowned_is_the_new_newl
·3 years agoNo doubt, Rockstar! Well said!
sextons-sweet-deals
·3 years agoThank 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
·3 years agoI 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
·3 years agotypo correction! I meant 'I don't participate in PL'.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years ago@sextons-sweet-deals So those Impressions are not the result of a PLS campaign?
sextons-sweet-deals
·3 years agoI don't pay for promoted listings. I believe a real shopper will look and compare listing before buying than just buying the first thing that pops up front of all other similar listings.
lpreowned_is_the_new_newl
·3 years agoPL's are actually NOT blown out of proportion. I get sales from Product Listings advertising all of the time. Advertising is the cost of doing business. Each one of us has to calculate if advertising is advantageous to our respective businesses and bottom line. For me it's a no-brainer, and super inexpensive to advertise on eBay. And of course eBay buyers will do their homework, but they can't do homework on a listing that is never seen under a pile of 100,000 listings. PL evens the playing field for us smaller players. I'm sure I will get naysayers, but it works for my business. At least... until they started playing with everything. Good news is, I see PL impressions gradually going back up over the last 3 days. Hopefully the "experiment" is done, and I can get back to packing instead of typing.
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years ago100% i was skeptical at 1st when i used promoted listings and when i finally did put into effect at only 1 and 2% i had a big boom in sales.
I was in the middle of homework when this all happened i was using the chart to see if i go up in the percentage $$ of PL's and to see if the more impressions at a higher rate would be worth it.
I also have seen PL go up slightly the past two days slightly though. for me Sundays are always much higher than the rest of the week.
my sales have been relatively the same tho.
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoimpressions 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.
zamo-zuan
·3 years agoPromoted 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.
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoyeah 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!!!
valueaddedresource
·3 years ago@incrediblefinds199 let us know if those higher views for yesterday stay the same in your reports over the next few days please.
The last time we went through some obvious problems with eBay's reporting, sellers noticed that some of the stats changed significantly after a few days - eBay's excuse for it is that it can take 72 hours for the reports to reconcile.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Significant-Drops-in-eBay-Impressions-and-Organic-Page-Views-A/m-p/33742422/highlight/true#M2210573
For page views, we count the number of visits to your listing and for impressions we count when a link to your listings appears (e.g. it's displayed on an eBay Search results page). We do not estimate or extrapolate the counts. We do provide the following message for our metrics “Impressions and page views are reported in near-real time. Please allow approximately 72 hours to reconcile.â€
I've received several recent reports from sellers showing this is happening again - since around July 18th eBay has been showing what appear to be large spikes in external visits that are later "reconciled" down to less than half of what was originally reported.
These are all from the same account:
July 19 from July 20th report
July 19 from Jul 23 report
July 21 from the morning of July 24
And July 21 from the evening of July 24
The external views are the most obvious, but other stats change as well.
According to eBay, there's nothing wrong when this happens and it's all just working as intended with their 72 hour reconciliation. 🤔
Whether you believe that or not, I thought it would be worth mentioning for anyone else who may be seeing increases in external views...you may want to check back in a few days to see if those stats are really true.
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agomy external sites views are minimal they have not moved and are relatively the same through the past 3 months. its roughly 1-5% daily. my chart looks nothing like that. the dark blue is the smallest part and the rest organic and non are split relatively even for the most part. my External sites views have not really gone up just the promoted and no promoted. its just the one chart that is messed up, or might be messed up.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@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.
valueaddedresource
·3 years ago@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.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@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.
gurlcat
·3 years agoI 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?
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agohello, 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
·3 years agoIt 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
·3 years agoMy 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
OP3 years agoThanks 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
·3 years ago@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.
themodernavenue
·3 years agoI'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
OP3 years agoeBay 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.
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoanyone 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!!!
lpreowned_is_the_new_newl
·3 years agoI should also add that Social media data on the social performance section has flatlined also. It's a great tool when it actually works. Hopefully all will soon be debugged so those of us that are affected can get back to selling. The thing about these bugs is that everyone does not get affected at the same time. That's why some are maintaining ,and others are following like rocks. I'm the rock this time.
lpreowned_is_the_new_newl
·3 years agoI came here because I saw the same thing. Daily impressions cut by over 50% starting Monday July 17th, 2023. Sales evaporated for me to 0/per day since that day. eBay, you guys are killing me. The harder I work the harder I fail. There has to be an upturn coming one day. This downward spiral has been going on for years.
nilis13
·3 years agoYes, my impressions and page views have dropped to numbers I have never seen before..sales are down too..
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agowhat day did they drop, seems like tuesday for everyone
nilis13
·3 years agoYes they certainly did and getting worse each day
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years agoWill check out what @valueaddedresource pointed to.
I should have made clear that although my impressions have dropped by 1/2 (today the 20th shows the same), my sales have remained pretty static.
I'm not sure it matters much. As I noted in the other thread I linked, there have been 2 recent cases of this that got a lot of traction with Ebay, including participation from the Ebay reps here & in each case, they came back & said it was simply a reporting error or lag. In neither case, were most people convinced that's what it was.
blacktopautoparts
·3 years agoMy sales have also been consistent. I am also noticing that this is affecting the ROAS too the more I look into the issue. The rest of my impressions metrics seem to be okay, but we will see if any of those numbers start to change. I've also spoken with a few reps yesterday about this, so hoping that they are taking a look into this and do not wait till more and more people complain.
valueaddedresource
·3 years ago@blacktopautoparts @simply-the-best-for-you - thanks for sharing that additional info about your sales remaining relatively consistent.
That makes sense within the context of what we think might be being tested - whether or not all the ads below the description and feedback actually convert in any significant way.
eBay counts impressions as soon as the page loads, but that doesn't mean the buyer ever actually scrolls that far down, so those impressions may ultimately be pretty meaningless to both sellers and to eBay.
Since eBay doesn't make any extra money from PLS unless there is a sale, clogging up the page with a bunch of ads that don't convert is kind of pointless.
Supply and demand could also come into play here - eBay may find that less ad slots may convert better on the buyer experience side and of course at that point there would be greater competition among sellers to get into those slots if the supply is limited, so ad rates for those spots may increase.
This is all just conjecture at this point - hopefully eBay will be willing to at least confirm or deny if what we are seeing in that other thread is actually a test and/or if it's related to the drops in PL Impressions being reported.
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoyeah my page views and sales have been relatively the same, as i mentioned in the OG post i raised them right before this glitch (bad timing) and its showing in my page views the amount of promoted views have gone up significantly.
I agree i dont think it matters to much as long as page views are not cut in half, then we go a serious issue.
for me i am more curious if its a glitch cause i was using the chart to compare and do some research in to how much if i raise in PL would help, I did it like a year ago i made everything 1% and then they changed the min to 2% but when i changed them it gave me at least 30-40 more sales. some niche stuff i dont promote. i took 4 years of technical analysis. (Basically the study of charts in general) charts are super important to me, they tell a story but not with glitches.
when i was looking this up, i seen stuff like this has happened in the past but has not affected me prior, my impression have been constant throughout the year.
fingers crossed they fix it.
valueaddedresource
·3 years agoAnyone who is seeing drops in Promoted Listings impressions specifically in the last few days should check out this thread - like @my-cottage-books-and-antiques said. it appears eBay may be testing removing most of the Promoted Listings ads from the View Item page.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Anyone-else-seeing-these-changes-to-Promoted-Listings-on-View/m-p/33878451#M2246540
eBay has stated in the past that most PL impressions come from the View Item page, not from search, so if this test is widespread it could definitely cause a significant drop in Promoted impressions.
@blacktopautoparts @rod_of_rock @incrediblefinds199
the-hook-and-the-loop
·3 years agoYou guys are still playing the eBay game "Figure out that Glitch"?
I think eBay is dedicating some time to non-promoted listings since there are hundreds of thousands of sellers against paying anymore in fees. That's a lot of merchandise that won't be sold if promoted listings are the only listings being shown. Try ending promotional campaigns. Most of you have taken a hit on impressions anyway.
rod_of_rock
·3 years agoOur PL impressions have cratered by 80% since 7/18/2023. As a result our sales on Ebay are massively underperforming our Facebook and Poshmark accounts. We have reset the campaign to see if this restores marketing and page view numbers, if not then the issue is clearly systematic and internal to Ebay. Hopefully the network engineering team gets this sorted out by the weekend.
stainlessenginecovers
·3 years ago1.) you are NOT selling things that have many competitors so why on earth would you be using PL in the first place?
2.) Views are all that matters; 'impressions' is in the 100's of thousands and basically means that if someone searched for 'black socks' and 500,000 listings 'appear', then that would count as an 'impression' but the person doing the search may never make it to page 4022 to see your listing.
Therefore, 'views' are is the ONLY measure-able anyone should be looking at.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years agoJust looked & yes, between Jul 16 & 18th, my Organic Impressions dropped by 1/2. My PL impressions were static & I had not changed rates (though I have used dynamic rates for a couple of years). Lately there have been several of these & they have been 'reporting issues' or delays per Ebay.
There was a similar, though not exactly the same, report here:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Sharp-drop-in-Impressions/m-p/33880314#M2247078
blacktopautoparts
·3 years agoSo as of right now, my PL impressions are at 1/2 of where they were at the day before. We have had a drop of 50% now over the last two days. I wonder if this is a glitch on what is being reported or not even sure what is going on at this point. Our sales have dropped the last two days so we will see how tomorrow goes. I did report this already to support twice today.
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoi talked to eBay they are aware of it i made a reply on it earlier today!!!
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoSo this is good info for everyone that is having this issue, i exchanged info with eBay and they just reached out on Facebook and they submitted this comment thread to the tech team, along with the info, they agreed it seems like a technical error or glitch. hopefully they fix it, seems like most people got this issue starting this past Tuesday.
As far as my end goes, i upped my rates over the weekend, my page views have been highest the last 5 days than the past two months. also on the page view breakdown it shows promoted, on site and off site, and organic and both off and on site promotions on that chart are higher than ever. Its just that one chart for impressions that seems to be glitchy.
If it gets fixed on my end i will update with any info i get!!
frugalmarketplace
·3 years agoI looked at my impressions , not nearly what you have, but I guess the real issue is conversions rate.
lapulgaproducts
·3 years agoI'm also having issues with the Promoted Listing impressions. I had been averaging about 210,000 daily impressions and yesterday had a massive drop down to 98,000. I had not changed anything until today, so you changing your promoted rate may have nothing to do with it. Not too sure what is going on, but sales have suffered drastically as well due to this.
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoyou seem to be having the same issue, might be a glitch then, Yesterday is when it dipped for me as well, only on the chart though, I just happened to increase them right before this happened, i dont think its from that but its a bit discouraging cause i was doing a bit of a experiment by raising them slightly then a little more. it was going up and up had like 500k Sunday but was constantly between 300 and 400k for at least a year. then to see 100k yesterday and today right now I'm only at like 60k. like i mentioned above page views and sales have jumped as i increased and even the chart today and yesterday for that page views is right on par, sales as well. i got a feeling its a glitch!!!! glad you responded. thanks!!
blacktopautoparts
·3 years agoI posted this in another thread here.
I'm surprised that more are not reporting this. We are noticing the same thing on our account. From yesterday to the day before we had a 200,000 impressions drop. Right now, from yesterday to today, we have a good 120,000 impressions drop. Overall today, we are down 350,000 impressions from what we normally average if today's impressions hold. I called support earlier and let them know. The girl there did agree that something is messed up and when this will be fixed is another story. Who knows what is going on now as its one glitch after another.
lapulgaproducts
·3 years agoMay I ask how your sales have been? Since this drop in promoted listings impressions, sales have bottomed out for us. We typically average $300+ daily sales and today we are currently about $80. From what I have gathered from other sellers is that sales have been right about the same, so we must be part of the unfortunate few to have been affected in the sales department as well.
blacktopautoparts
·3 years agoSales have been somewhat inline to what we have been getting each day, but we did have this weird spike on Tuesday (not complaining, LOL!). We get these weird spikes at least 1-3 times a month. It's like someone opened up the floodgates. Then yesterday's sales were quite the drop from the day before, but were still good enough for us.
Something is definitely going on because this past week I am noticing not a single sale overnight at all. Then sales usually now do not come trickling in anywhere from 8-10 am CT. I have nothing to hide here like some do and you can see the size of our account, and we do everything eBay expects of a seller + for as long as we've been on this platform know all of the tricks in keeping listings fresh. We even list on a daily basis.
Not sure if you guys ever watch My Boring Reseller Life on YT, but most of the issues he encounters I've seen them and I know many others do too on these forums. If you keep a close eye to the trends on your account, you know when something is jacked up.
You also have a pretty nice store with the collectibles you are selling and a nice size store. It should not make any sense on the drop.
lapulgaproducts
·3 years agoI don't think it's a glitch at this point. This is going on to the third day again and my sales as well as traffic have gone down the same path as the promoted listings impressions. All my metrics have gone down roughly about the same percentage.
lapulgaproducts
·3 years agoSame today again, completely dead on sales. I'm inclining more that eBay changed the "formula" for promoted listings. I'm currently losing more than half in sales.
houseful4him
·3 years agoMy sales have tanked as well.
vancatstore
·3 years agoYes I got the same issue , From yesterday ( 18 Jul )
I got 50% impression dropped .
today is the same 50% also .
this reflecting less where as you were reached to equal number of 4,6,8,etc million impressions .
this happened to me twice in last 3 months
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoseems like we all had the drop around the same time!!!!
incrediblefinds199
OP3 years agoyeah exact same time its started for me, i messaged eBay on Facebook as that seems to be the best way to communicate sometimes. They finally messaged me late at night but i am talking with them now on Facebook. At least its brought to there attention. What's odd as i mentioned, page views are up and it breaks it down to show internal and external promotions and non promoted with the graph for page views. That graph for page views shows a increase almost 35-40% increase in promoted listing the last 4 days. 4 days ago is when i upped my promotional percentage to do a test and to see if it would increase sale and to see if its worth it and to se how it plays out on the charts. bad timing for me!!! I went to school for technical analysis (study of stock market charts in a nut shell, so chart info is extra important to me, as i am trained to read charts of all kinds) sales have been decent though. it seems to be working but the graph is just not right though. really hard for us to get info.
I feel that having the page views and sales be the same for this time of year, and only the one chart wrong, seems to be working properly but be nice if they could let us know what the issues is and the chart be working properly, i am sure if anyone like me that raised it right before this glitch, there not going to be inclined to keep the rates increased. They should get this straight ASAP as it is probably affecting them as far as $$ and reps being tied up over it!!!
Sales have been decent for me for this time of year, i sell mainly vintage tools and vintage stuff and sales tend to drop in the summer about 35 percent maybe even a little more but there consistent, last year as well, tool prices do as well as far as common desired stuff.
I hope eBay help see this forum because i seen in another forum that was dated about a month ago while searching for issues about this. That person has a similar issue and the eBay community person left a message on there saying to that person that they would expedite helping the person get the glitch fixed.
fingers crossed!!! 🤞🤞🤞
ri_fashions
·3 years agoI 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.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·3 years agoIt could be a glitch in the reporting, it could be a real drop. Some of us have noticed that ebay might be testing a reduction in the number of slots given to Promoted Listings, which , if the test is widespread, could impact the number of impressions, while at the same time views and sales might be OK (presumably because ebay is being choosier about which items to put in the slots.)
But that's all speculation on my part.