How do I hide Sponsored Listings?

[callixto]

I HATE, I repeat HATE Sponsored Listings. They are ruining my eBay experience, and you can best believe that I will NEVER purchase a Sponsored item.

I want a way to turn them OFF. I do not want to see the same overpriced item at the top, middle, and bottom of every page of results, especially when I have specific sort criteria. What is the point of 'newly listed' or 'price low to high' if the first results are the Sponsored Listing? I guarantee you that seeing these same listings over and over is not going to weaken my resolve and make me want to purchase these random items. Au contraire, mon frère. Any seller that makes frequent use of Sponsored Listings is going to go on my blacklist. You people are the worst.

[cbx6]

There is a technical arms race underway regarding blocking of odious Ebay "Sponsored" listings. 

In the past, Adblock Plus could be relied on to eliminate them, however Ebay programmers have gone to great lengths to make the "SPONSORED" tag invisible to ad blockers.  (They've removed the word itself from the HTML, replacing it with  individual letters with random, invisible dummy letters mixed in.)

Fortunately there is a filter that can be added to the uBlock ad blocker that will kill these spam entries - search Reddit for details.

[eburtonlab]

@cbx6 

Thanks! For some reason that custom uBlock filter seems to work in Chrome, but I have been unable to get it to work yet in Firefox.

Here is the custom rule from Reddit:

ebay.com##li.s-item:has(span:has-text(/S[^P]*?P[^O]*?O[^N]*?N[^S]*?S[^O]*?O[^R]*?R[^E]*?E[^D]*?D/))

[cbx6]

Odd - that's the filter I use with Firefox (69.0.3 (64-bit)) in Windows, and it works - at least in my test case, a search for "OBDLink LX".

[eburtonlab]

@cbx6 

Thanks for the followup -- it turns out I had an older version of uBlock installed in Firefox. Once I installed the latest version of uBlock Origin and added that rule to my filter list, the sponsored listings have been removed from Firefox.

[donofthedesert]

TOTALLY AGREE!!!

EBAY IS HIRING SOME SLIMY PEOPLE FOR IT'S MARKETING.

[newelvis53]

I did that simple fix and things greatly improved. Many thanks. How I hate this intrusive greed driven **bleep**.

[rock_crushers_unlimited]

I completely agree. I think ebay is trying to go under on purpose.  Sponsored ads suc. Nothing but commercials. At least you get stuff thats relevant.  I get things completely out of the box. Ebay is getting worse and worse. They wonder why they are making less and less and other formats are getting more and bigger. Wow were charging top dollar now and figure every way possible to get more out of you while giving you less ways of selling the way you want and hey for even more money we will put your ads first. I actually had a nit wit say OH but you dont have to pay anything unless it sells LMAO HELLO stupid you dont have to pay selling fees till its over either you nit wit LOL  I really need to just get off ebay completely. 

[m3power03]

Yep, the good ol' days of the early 2000's internet are surely gone for good. 

[kirbo1000]

mudshark you are wrong. I have ebarf open right now and the 'sponsored' listing I clicked on is a regular ebarf listing. You seem to have promoted and sponsored mixed up. Actually I have not seen what you are calling sponsored, which take you off ebarf.

[mcfractal]

If your product is found by the search query, then there is no problem.  However paying to have your product inserted might seem like a harmless distraction, like the impulse buy area at a grocery store by the registers, what has happened is more like a grocery store buried by impulse items, burying and hiding the products the buyer is looking for.   I totally support blacklisting anyone who contributes to hiding legitimate items with their **bleep**.

[carbonart0]

I just stopped shopping entirely on Ebay since they started charging hidden sales taxes and inserting preferred listings in my searches for specific items.  

I used to do frequent as fast searches for newly listed items, but now it doesn't work at all because of all the preferred listings.  

I just gave up and stopped shopping on Ebay - it takes too long to see the newly listed items and I'm not about to waste more time trying to use add blocker software so that I can spend money on Ebay.

[jamesenelson]

....and here I thought ebay was making money off fees they charge when items are listed and sold..slaps forehead...

[dinpavent0]

I understand... where the OP is coming from but is at the same time being very rude and taking it out on the wrong people. The OP should be mad at eBay for this set up NOT the sellers. We are people too and yea I agree it is completely annoying to search for something and get tons of stuff I did not search for. IT is eBay's fault and their set up. As a seller I only do promoted listings for few items, not every listing I have, it would be pointless. I think most seller's only do this for a handful of items they sell that are in saturated categories. If someone is being that rude, I wouldn't want to do business either way. It is not nice to treat anyone like that. Getting waayyyyyyy too heated for NO REASON. I feel offended also, but not worth responding to someone like that.

[bluttrull]

One of the filter list maintainer(s) must be keeping up with ebay's changes, because my uBO blocks the sponsored listings without me adding a custom filter.  They do appear for a second on my slowish PC, then disappear.

[sendmorechuckberry]

I guess they don't make enough money already. Does it ever end? I pay cable TV to send me endless commercials from the networks. They should be paying the cable companies to spread their propaganda. The profit motive of capitalism knows no bounds. And it's only getting worse. The government regulates what it shouldn't and doesn't regulate what it should.