Sponsored Items From This Seller
I was looking at some of my own active listings while logged in to this posting ID. I was checking how some of my shipping settings were appearing.
Upon scrolling down I found "sponsored items from this seller" with 2 rows of ads.
Problem with that? I am not using sponsored listings and none of those listings were mine. They were all from the same seller, but that seller was not me.
Headline did not say "sponsored items from a similar seller," it said "this seller," giving buyers the impression those listings are mine.
Way to go, eBay. 🤦
Is there anybody else here that does not use sponsored listings and is willing to have me check a few of their listings to see if the same thing is happening?
45 comments
simply-the-best-for-you
·2 years agoFWIW, I DO promote, every single item. I do not have any line titled "Sponsored Items from this Seller" & that is true whether I am signed in or not. In fact, the display looks to be the exact same for me, either way.
Most of all the rows are not my items, however I definitely noticed a pattern (a logical one), that the number of items that were mine in the various rows varied depending on how many I list of the brand. When I searched on an item that was a brand I only had a handful of listings for, I only saw a couple of my own listings. When I searched on a brand I have a bunch listed of, I saw a lot more of my items & they were more varied.
But I'm not seeing the line you're talking about, at all, so IDK if this will help you at all.
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoMaybe you're not scrolling down far enough past the description? I viewed one of your blouses and one of your t-shirts. Both listings had 2 sections "sponsored items from this seller" and all items displayed were yours.
Then I viewed your cowboy boot decor # 176382272987 and found 2 sections of sponsored items from "this seller" that mostly weren't yours.
dhbookds
·2 years agoSeems like to me these endless loading pages were a "craze" at many sites some time back, but then diminished, I thought due to "overwhelmingly" a buyer...... is Ebay behind or in front of innovation?
animal-house-8
·2 years agoSo I did check my listings and does say "Sponsored items from this seller" but all things under that category were my items. I would wright down the item #s that are not yours and send to ebay, not sure if that will work but you can try.
a_c_green
·2 years ago@animal-house-8 @devon@ebay @wastingtime101
I can confirm that; I picked a listing of yours at random (126595036990), and it did show your own items under that subhead. However, I noticed a couple of other interesting things while scrolling down that listing:
Given the randomizing seen, it's likely that even if you view listing 126595036990 as I did, you're probably going to see a different lineup than what I got, but for the record, here is the entire listing of subheads and totals for just this one listing, added to the bottom of the item listing itself. (Also see footnotes below):
You may also like
Influenced by recent sponsored views*
Frequently bought together
Influenced by recent sponsored views*â€
Explore related sponsored items
Consider these items
Find more sponsored items
Consider these items†‡
Sponsored items from this seller
Sponsored items from this sellerâ€
Similar customers also bought‡
* Intermixed listings similar to that of the seller (vintage amber glass) with those similar to my usual area of browsing (vintage bicycle parts)
†Duplicate heading; different order of listings
‡ Only 4 items
In conclusion, it's difficult to tell what assortment is intentional and what assortment is random. There appear to be two general rules of retrieval: one picks only other listings similar to that of the seller; the other picks a mixture of the seller's interests and the buyer's interests (which leads to some really weird juxtapositions). For that matter, it's hard to tell how or why the seemingly endless parade of groupings finally decides to quit and let the page footer finally show up at the bottom.
Just as a data point, this one listing from the seller carried more excess baggage than the Titanic: 11 subheadings spanning 143 other listings, mostly 15 listings under each subhead alone (two had only 4 listings).
The coding appears incomplete and untested. The headings appear at random, without regard to whether a heading has already been used before on the page. As seen when viewing my own listings, a retrieval supposedly showing the seller's own promoted listings can bring up someone else's instead, and code does not seem to notice or test whether the retrieved listings actually belong to the seller of record.
While I myself never bother to scroll that far down beyond the apparent end of the seller's listing, I'm sure that others do, but I don't see how this random, buggy churn of links to other products, many from competing sellers, really helps to boost business here. I especially don't see how it benefits the seller whose listing screen space is being commandeered.
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoI cleared all of my recently viewed listings @a_c_green @animal-house-8 then I looked at listing 285712046949.
Below the fold I'm seeing:
- you may also like
- frequently bought together
- sponsored items from this seller (all listings belong to animal-house-8)
- sponsored items from this seller (only 2 of the listings belong to animal-house-8, the rest belong to a seller called dishwisher)
- explore related sponsored items
- consider these items
- influenced by recent sponsored views
- explore related sponsored items
- related sponsored items
- similar customers also bought
- influenced by recent sponsored views
a_c_green
·2 years agoHar! Too funny... 😄
I'm wondering if there's some way to use all that random effluent for wagering... or turn it into a drinking game somehow... It must be good for something...
fbusoni
·2 years agoSeems like AI has taken control and is refusing to give eBay access to the code.
"Do you read me Hal?"
"Affirmative Dave, I read you."
 
a_c_green
·2 years agoThis isn't an AI issue or side-effect; it's just a couple of simple programming errors, including a failure to keep track of which subheads have already been used within the listing, and a failure to keep track of the listing's seller ID (so it can do a proper retrieval of that seller's other listings, not those of someone else).
Both of these mistakes could be resolved within a few lines of code (heck, I can write it in my head), but because no one actually tested the enhancements or reviewed the results, the errors made it all the way into Production, so here we are.
janet9988
·2 years agohttps://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Ask-Me-About-eBay-Ads/m-p/34571548#M2429467
Post #4
I think this is related to providing LESS transparency so no one truly knows if it it the Halo attribution.
maccnc11
·2 years agoSure go for it, I'm not seeing your problem but I do see 2 rows of items between my description, that are not my items and the titles are "Similar Items Sponsored" & "Explore Related Items Sponsored", I don't have a Store and I never Promote my Listings. It would be Nice if eBay would at least keep some Connectivity between a Sellers Photos and The Description, not your photos then somebody else's stuff then your description, gives me the feeling eBay is moving away from a selling platform to a Click Bait Platform.
a_c_green
·2 years ago@maccnc11 : Those groupings are performing as advertised, because they're not claiming to show more of your items, but someone else's.
The problem occurs when you get down to a section labeled "Sponsored items from this seller" (i.e. you), and they're actually not your items. In my case, I don't even have sponsored listings in the first place. Everything they showed as mine actually belonged to another seller.
maccnc11
·2 years agoMy complaint was why couldn't they be a little more Fluid about it as in Show my listing complete with Description then move on to somebody else, did you see the interrupt Photos of my item them 2 rows of somebody else's stuff then back to my description, that's enough to confuse and send any buyer on his way, it may also explain why buyers don't read Descriptions too.
iamalwaysright
·2 years agoBottom line: We all look alike to ebay, they can't tell us apart from each other.
onefootflipper
·2 years agoThis is an issue that isn't really an issue. It isn't an AI problem, this is a human programming type problem.
However I think you would have better luck finding a winning lottery ticket in the street than this problem ever effecting you in any way. My customers don't know who I am or care. Your customers don't know who you are or care. Anyone wanting to see your other items is likely to use the very prominent option to "Seller's Other Item" link. Anyone scrolling down to the 47th row of promoted listings is just death scroll shopping and isn't caring who it is from.
While I doubt they would release the information, I would bet that the conversion rate of appearing in the 47th row of promoted listings is likely 1 in many millions.
a_c_green
·2 years agoIt usually is around here.
@devon@ebay : Just as another data point for your report:
I logged out of my selling account and into my buying account just now, then viewed one of my listings at random (i.e. so I was seeing my listing as anyone else on eBay would do). Sure enough, when I scrolled down the page, I got to a massive section (25 listings) prominently labeled "Sponsored items from this seller" when in fact:
I noticed that all 25 listings were from the same seller, which leads me to think that the page programming might be losing track of the seller ID for the current listing, and is somehow accidentally coming up with some other value for "this seller" by the time we've gotten this far down the page.
I have a theory about what might be going wrong: At the point where "Sponsored items from this seller" appears in the example I'm looking at (335494820788), we have already slogged through no fewer than seven other groups of other sellers' listings, with 25 listings in each group. These groups appear to be dynamically generated once your browser (I'm viewing this in desktop mode) reaches the bottom of the original listing, with more groups being generated as you scroll further down the page.
The groupings seem to pop up one at a time under various titles (e.g. "You may also like," "Explore related sponsored items" and so on), and I'm wondering whether one or more of those retrievals is failing to clean up after itself, or otherwise is accidentally replacing the ID of the current seller (me) with someone else instead. When it tries to do a retrieval of "Sponsored items from this seller" it is now actually holding some other seller's ID instead, and thus we see his listings rather than mine (if in fact I had any sponsored listings in the first place, which I don't). I did notice that items from the wrong seller listed as me had already previously appeared in other groupings further up the page.
I agree that as coding errors go, this is not that big a deal, but it does mislead the interested buyer into thinking that the items listed as mine are, in fact, not.
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoYeah, I agree to an extent. If you read my post #17 above I said the impact (to buyers/sellers) is probably slim-to-none as most people aren't going to scroll that far, but I thought it was worth calling out because it's misleading and has potential to create problems. For all I know, there could be legal issues on eBay's end advertising more items from "this" seller then showing items from different sellers.
janet9988
·2 years agoPay close attention to see if you get charged promotions fees for someone else's items.
ten_o_nine
·2 years ago@wastingtime101
I don't have any sponsored items, but found it on one of my listings under this ID. item 387245661522
I just hope they get some sense and stop this madness.
gloryglorygifts
·2 years agoEbay doesn't care. As long as they are collecting fees on a sale it doesn't matter where it is coming from.
gloryglorygifts
·2 years agoI SWEAR that's how I lost sales from links I gave my friends. It's very confusing, I think, for people that only buy and don't sell on here. They don't seem to know that the sponsored items aren't from the same seller. I know, for a fact, that 3 of my friends thought they were buying from me, but didn't. I don't use sponsored listings either, so it is very frustrating.
sextons-sweet-deals
·2 years agojust a simple thought.
If I pay for a basic store subscription, shouldn't my listing only show my listing and all the other similar listings that I own in my store?
Why tag on other competitors' listings?
Seems eBay should be paying me something.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·2 years ago@wastingtime101 I noticed this on one of my listings a day or two ago. I do have some items in PL, but only some of the items in "from this seller" section were mine. I agree: this is a mess, and it is definitely misleading. I suspect @fbusoni is correct, this is yet another example of ebay's AI efforts behaving badly. I hope we get a response from officialdom on this.
The other thing that surprised me was just how many items they've squeezed onto the listing page now. I remember a time when getting the buyer to your listing page was a victory, because good photos and description might just close the sale. Now getting them to my page just means ebay has the opportunity to undermine the potential sale by taking them to a different item. You'd think they would want us to make the sale for the item the buyer came to see, but that no longer seems to be the strategy. Because the page sure isn't designed to clinch the sale. Maybe ebay needs a visit from the Home Office with the reminder : A. B. C.
A-Always.
B- Be.
C- Closing.
Always Be Closing.
fbusoni
·2 years agoRespectfully, this is not AI related. It is a simple case of not paying attention to html and possibly to Javascript.
It is a truly asinine mistake that once might expect to find on an exam in a high school programming class.
As I suggested in my initial post, if eBay cannot master the most elementary pieces of website construction, it should not be bothering with AI.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·2 years ago@fbusoni Ah, my mistake. Thanks for the clarification.
dhbookds
·2 years ago@adsteam@ebay these guys ought to know about this also..........
good catch @wastingtime101
fbusoni
·2 years agoMoral of the story: don't bother investing in "magical AI" when you have not yet figured out the fundamentals of html.
ckimodog
·2 years ago@fbusoni
Exactly what I thought....AI....what a mess. @wastingtime101 Thanks for letting me know, not sure what I can do. Definitely going to be confusing for the customer as to who the seller is.
biggymoe
·2 years agoI've never used sponsored listings. Feel free to look at mine. I would be interested in what you find.
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoChecked 2 trading cards and didn't see it, but then I checked your flask # 395522948230 and saw sponsored items from this seller; none of the listings are yours.
ckimodog
·2 years ago@wastingtime101
I don't use them. I'll let you know.
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoYour item # 364907109168 shows 5 rows of Sponsored items from this seller; none of the items are yours.
fern*wood
·2 years agoThat's crazy and so confusing for buyers. What if they were looking to buy multiple items from the seller to save on shipping and then find out they agreed to buy from several different sellers instead! I don't use promotions either.
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoCleared my entire eBay recently viewed history. Went directly to your listings, not through search. Your listings are not sponsored. Your food processor # 256584782625 is the only item in my recently viewed. All screenshots are from that listing.
- Screenshot 1 shows sponsored items from this seller; none of those listings are yours.
- Screenshots 2 & 3 show Influenced by recent sponsored views - but as we established, the only listing I viewed (yours) is not sponsored.
fern*wood
·2 years agoGood grief!
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoThere are about 4,769 sponsored ads on every listing, both above and below the description, so my assumption is most buyers will not scroll that far down and notice the 2 errors I called out (sponsored items from this seller & influenced by recent sponsored views).
So far I've only seen the problem below the fold, not above.
That said, it's sloppy, misleading, and inevitably some buyers will see it and end up confused. The only reason I noticed it (I never scroll down that far) is because I was glancing over competing ads displayed on my listing.
mcdougle4248
·2 years agoGreat catch @wastingtime101
I checked out several of my competitor's listings. I am also seeing the "Sponsored items from this seller" displaying items that are not from the same seller as the original listing.
This one is crazy. The seller is using a new account started on July 22, 2024. They have five listings and no sales. I doubt they would be able to use Promoted Listings at this point.
I find it interesting that quite a few of the listings shown in this module are "Direct from..."
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoHi @devon@ebay - eBay has some work to do to correct the above problems - are you able to report this on your end? Thanks!
devon@ebay
Hey @wastingtime101! Thank you for tagging me in on this and I will be sure to have it reported on my end.
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoChecked out one more item # 285929235796
Right below Sponsored listings from this seller showing 5 rows of @comics-scifi-collectibles items was another section of Sponsored listings from this seller showing 5 rows of items, and only 2 of those items belong to comics-scifi.
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoI'm also finding "influenced by recent sponsored views" to be problematic since a lot of the recommendations are based on viewing my own listings which are not sponsored. It would be more accurate if it said "influenced by recent views" or "influenced by recently viewed items"
I checked a friends account that does use sponsored listings and found:
Sponsored items from this seller followed by 5 rows of their own listings
and directly below
Sponsored items from this seller followed by 5 rows of listings from a different seller
Then I checked a couple of sellers that actively post on this forum.
I started with @gurlcat and looked at her listing # 126577313995
On her listing I found 5 rows of sponsored items from "this seller" and none of these listings are gurlcat's.
Then I looked at @mcdougle4248 's listing # 196225381152
On her listing I found 5 rows of sponsored items from "this seller" and most of those listings were mcdougle's, but some of them were not as pictured.
Not digging the way eBay has messed this all up and is misleading buyers.
broto_64
·2 years agoFrom that page, tell them what you think.
rockyroadtradingpost
·2 years agoI just tried it with my own account and all I saw below was "Similar Items, Sponsored." Nothing about "this seller." I wonder what's up with what you're seeing on your end?
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoOK, I'm checking out your listing 285970839681
Below item description and seller info I'm seeing:
So no issues there.
I cleared my "recently viewed" then took another stab by viewing item 285984816803
Below item description and seller info I'm seeing:
rockyroadtradingpost
·2 years ago@wastingtime101
Oh WOW! Great detective work. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Hopefully eBay will chime in to explain and rectify this.