eBay Germany is implementing a change to their promoted listing program where sellers will be charged for promoted listings even when the buyer never clicked directly on the sponsored ad, BUT someone else did. It certainly makes no sense to me, but it could create a situation where your competitor or someone who dislikes you could go and view all of your listings and then the seller would be on the hook for PL fees even if the sale was organic. Very confusing I know, but lets try to decipher this because as we all know, eBay.uk and eBay.de are all quasi testing grounds for what is eventually implemented into the US. eBay has a team of employees who click on the Ads and exhaust seller's budget? Do they have AI program that auto clicks on the Ads? Sellers are in the dark.
eBay has a team of employees who click on the Ads and exhaust seller's budget? Do they have AI program that auto clicks on the Ads? Sellers are in the dark.
Are you an employee from Etsy posting unfounded conspiracy theories in an attempt to undermine seller confidence in the eBay platform? Sellers are in the dark.
Well to answer one of your questions, yes they are programs to click on ads to generate revenue, exactly why I do not use click bait. Example those page jumps that seem to make you accidently click on a ad, well thats just a page finish loading right, well not always, a friend of mind has been working on just that one program for 5 years to try to tweak it.
@pidgeun1 your reference to exhausting a seller's budget shows you don't really understand what this change is all about - it has nothing to do with cost per click ads and there is no budget to exhaust.
I'd recommend going to the thread I linked above to read more about what the change actually says and what it means for sellers in Germany (and possibly other markets if eBay expands it in the future).
To your specific concerns about "revenge clicks" I'll just say what I said in that other thread:
I do absolutely believe malicious clicks happen (some people really are just that petty) and I do not believe eBay's assurances about their supposedly super special automated ways to mitigate it - not to mention that eBay's new partnership with OpenAI Operator enabling AI agents to use the web to accomplish shopping tasks like a personal assistant could make this a lot easier to do in mass even for less tech savvy people, but that's a whole other topic. 😂
But for now at least, I don't think it's the biggest reason to be concerned in all of this. I actually think non-malicious clicks that still have no intent to buy - other sellers doing research, looking at your listing to sell similar etc - could be a bigger problem both because I think it will happen more frequently but also because it's not intentionally abusive or malicious behavior so to whatever degree eBay's systems may be trying to detect and mitigate abuse, presumably those clicks won't even be on the radar.
For a long time I've seen sellers give others the advice that they should set their ad rates with the assumption that they will have to pay that fee if the item sells, that way they won't be at a loss if it happens and can be "pleasantly" surprised if it comes through as an organic sale instead - all eBay has really done with this change is to basically codify that advice and make the odds of that pleasant surprise far, far less likely for German sellers.
If nothing else I guess the upside is it strips away a lot of the pretense about Promoted Listings and lays bare what it really has been all along - a de facto "voluntary" FVF increase where sellers get to choose how much more they will pay while not really getting much of anything they can definitively and tangibly tie back to that extra spend in return.
eBay Germany has numerous policies that are quite different than on .com. Most of them have never migrated anywhere outside of Germany. Same is true of .uk, .au., .ca and maybe others.
On the other hand fiddling with Promoted Listings is probably a more likely candidate that some of the others.
@pidgeun1 wrote: eBay Germany is implementing a change to their promoted listing program where sellers will be charged for promoted listings even when the buyer never clicked directly on the sponsored ad, BUT someone else did. It certainly makes no sense to me, but it could create a situation where your competitor or someone who dislikes you could go and view all of your listings and then the seller would be on the hook for PL fees even if the sale was organic. Very confusing I know, but lets try to decipher this because as we all know, eBay.uk and eBay.de are all quasi testing grounds for what is eventually implemented into the US. eBay has a team of employees who click on the Ads and exhaust seller's budget? Do they have AI program that auto clicks on the Ads? Sellers are in the dark.
Or maybe the site could just have bots activating as many promoted listings as possible? - Just think of the BADLY NEEDED revenue that could be taken advantage of - Given my beliefs about this company?... well...lets just say I wouldn't put it past them...
atlasesattic
·1 year agoa lot of sellers will just stop using promoted listings if that happens.
simba6
·1 year agoI just never use any of the extra cost services.
luckythewinner
·1 year agoeBay has a team of employees who click on the Ads and exhaust seller's budget? Do they have AI program that auto clicks on the Ads? Sellers are in the dark.
Are you an employee from Etsy posting unfounded conspiracy theories in an attempt to undermine seller confidence in the eBay platform? Sellers are in the dark.
animal-house-8
·1 year agoWell to answer one of your questions, yes they are programs to click on ads to generate revenue, exactly why I do not use click bait. Example those page jumps that seem to make you accidently click on a ad, well thats just a page finish loading right, well not always, a friend of mind has been working on just that one program for 5 years to try to tweak it.
valueaddedresource
·1 year agoFor anyone interested in what the new Promoted Listings attribution changes for Germany are, details here:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Major-Changes-To-Promoted-Listings-Ad-Attribution-In-Germany/m-p/34898666/highlight/true#M2516189
@pidgeun1 your reference to exhausting a seller's budget shows you don't really understand what this change is all about - it has nothing to do with cost per click ads and there is no budget to exhaust.
I'd recommend going to the thread I linked above to read more about what the change actually says and what it means for sellers in Germany (and possibly other markets if eBay expands it in the future).
To your specific concerns about "revenge clicks" I'll just say what I said in that other thread:
I do absolutely believe malicious clicks happen (some people really are just that petty) and I do not believe eBay's assurances about their supposedly super special automated ways to mitigate it - not to mention that eBay's new partnership with OpenAI Operator enabling AI agents to use the web to accomplish shopping tasks like a personal assistant could make this a lot easier to do in mass even for less tech savvy people, but that's a whole other topic. 😂
But for now at least, I don't think it's the biggest reason to be concerned in all of this. I actually think non-malicious clicks that still have no intent to buy - other sellers doing research, looking at your listing to sell similar etc - could be a bigger problem both because I think it will happen more frequently but also because it's not intentionally abusive or malicious behavior so to whatever degree eBay's systems may be trying to detect and mitigate abuse, presumably those clicks won't even be on the radar.
For a long time I've seen sellers give others the advice that they should set their ad rates with the assumption that they will have to pay that fee if the item sells, that way they won't be at a loss if it happens and can be "pleasantly" surprised if it comes through as an organic sale instead - all eBay has really done with this change is to basically codify that advice and make the odds of that pleasant surprise far, far less likely for German sellers.
If nothing else I guess the upside is it strips away a lot of the pretense about Promoted Listings and lays bare what it really has been all along - a de facto "voluntary" FVF increase where sellers get to choose how much more they will pay while not really getting much of anything they can definitively and tangibly tie back to that extra spend in return.
slippinjimmy
·1 year agoeBay Germany has numerous policies that are quite different than on .com. Most of them have never migrated anywhere outside of Germany. Same is true of .uk, .au., .ca and maybe others.
On the other hand fiddling with Promoted Listings is probably a more likely candidate that some of the others.
isaiah53-57
·1 year agoOr maybe the site could just have bots activating as many promoted listings as possible? - Just think of the BADLY NEEDED revenue that could be taken advantage of - Given my beliefs about this company?... well...lets just say I wouldn't put it past them...
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·1 year ago@pidgeun1
There are already several threads about the German situation, and this has been discussed. You might want to read those threads.