Anyone else seeing these changes to Promoted Listings on View Item Page?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

I know ebay has been testing various changes to the View Item (listing) page, maybe along with the Ads Team.

I also know that the Ads Team acknowledge a while ago that one of their "modules" (something like "People who views this item also viewed these items") was showing ORGANIC listings, not sponsored listings. I believe they also said that different listings show different modules at different times.

I'm seeing two things tonight that are interesting. For me, both in Chrome and Edge, I'm seeing only one, sometimes two , modules on listings---both between the above- the- fold section and the description box, with nothing below the end of the listing. I'm guessing this is a test. (Of course, it could be a glitch of some sort, as well).

Looking at the two modules, the module titles are "Similar sponsored listings" and "Related Sponsored Listings". Now, here's the thing. Each has a "See all>" option, and if I click on that, a new page opens.

That page shows 25 listings under "Similar Sponsored Items", followed by 25 listings under "Similar Items"....as far as I can figure, the 25 items under Similar Items are NOT sponsored items.

I don't know whether the items in the second group are true organic listings, or listings in a Promoted Listing campaign being shown as organic. Or a mix of both. 

But if ebay is starting to mix in organic with promoted on some of these non-search results pages, it's a pretty big shift for the Ads team. 

[hk-resale]

Hey there, we've seen you commenting on a lot of the threads regarding low sales/impressions.  Have your sales ever came back???  

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@simply-the-best-for-you I think the drop in impressions is most likely a reporting glitch. This test would only impact impressions dramatically if it is a widespread test, and we've had so few people respond on this post, there's no way of even guessing whether it is or not. 

If it is widespread, I wouldn't be too surprised to hear that impressions are down, but views/sales are not necessarily down along with them.  With so many slots for PLS nowadays, it stands to reason that impressions are up, but that doesn't guarantee any sort of increase in views or sales.....I think a lot of them are what I think of as "junk impressions"

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ITA with all of that.  My money is on a "reporting issue" that may or may not be an actual reporting issue LOL.  

I also noticed that I made a weird typo in my post 25 (rough day yesterday), this sentence below: 

The only one I saw that was different was when I checked one of my one via searching

SHOULD READ  "when I checked one of MINE via searching". 

[nuclearomen]

the ads on my listings in incog are there but are they actually organic or are they sponsored ads that just have the word "sponsored" removed? It doesn't make sense ebay would use their precious sponsored real-estate on listings for organic, seriously, makes no sense at all when the whole objective is to get them more $$ on FVF's. 

But...if that's the case, then we already found solution, end PL campaign and don't promote, get your organic ads shown and no extra fee applied when they sell 😆

[valueaddedresource]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

the ads on my listings in incog are there but are they actually organic or are they sponsored ads that just have the word "sponsored" removed? It doesn't make sense ebay would use their precious sponsored real-estate on listings for organic, seriously, makes no sense at all when the whole objective is to get them more $$ on FVF's. 

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@nuclearomen as far as the FTC is concerned, eBay is required to label sponsored ads in some way - typically what we have seen on the view item page is they don't have to be individually tagged as sponsored if the title of that ad module says sponsored than that's good enough for all items in that module.

We've previously gotten confirmation from the ads team that if you see a module labeled "People who viewed this item also viewed", those are organic placements.

So, assuming eBay is playing by the rules (heck of an assumption I know, but I have no evidence to the contrary on this topic at the moment, so we'll go with it 😂), if the title of the module does not say sponsored in some way (Related Sponsored Items, Sponsored Items From Top Rated Sellers, etc), they should be organic.

The big open question here is where do halo items fit into this whole scenario? Technically I don't think they would have to be labeled as sponsored but that may be a bit of a gray area.

I agree that it flies in the face of what we have seen from eBay for a while now and I initially found it hard to believe they would ever intentionally remove some of the ads, but maybe (hopefully) @my-cottage-books-and-antiques is right that perhaps eBay is finally starting to consider that the ad stuffing strategy may not be working for them if many of those ads don't actually convert.

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 be featured if the supply is limited, so ad rates for those spots may increase.

It's all just conjecture at this point - I really hoped eBay would be willing to provide *some* answers if for no other reason than to address concerns about the falling impressions, but I'm not holding my breath.

[nuclearomen]

@valueaddedresource the only change to PL was suppose to be the inclusion of PLD into PLS - even though that was already active before the update, they were suppose to update the campaign pages, but they haven't, I started a new campaign 2 days ago (fixed, i don't do their insane rates). 

It would still not make sense (or pay much) for them to remove sponsored ads and replace with organic, and then keep the same amount of ads on the listings... i mean in a ebay view, those ads aren't making them extra. Halo ads wouldn't work well in the scenario because they know most items are not searched but found on listings through the ads, in order to make it halo, one has to visit a listing on the sponsored and then they say it was halo when they click any other prompted listings organic ad

[valueaddedresource]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

@valueaddedresource the only change to PL was suppose to be the inclusion of PLD into PLS - even though that was already active before the update, they were suppose to update the campaign pages, but they haven't, I started a new campaign 2 days ago (fixed, i don't do their insane rates). 

It would still not make sense (or pay much) for them to remove sponsored ads and replace with organic, and then keep the same amount of ads on the listings... i mean in a ebay view, those ads aren't making them extra. Halo ads wouldn't work well in the scenario because they know most items are not searched but found on listings through the ads, in order to make it halo, one has to visit a listing on the sponsored and then they say it was halo when they click any other prompted listings organic ad

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@nuclearomen but that's the thing, with what we are seeing here, eBay is *not* keeping the same amount of ads on the listing.

The most important part of what we are seeing here, imo, is the changes to what is shown below the feedback module - the typical experience has been that area usually has 70+ other items (if you count the scrolling modules) with multiple rows of various PL groupings as well as maybe some organic rows.

What we have been noticing the last few days is that, depending on browser/login or incognito etc., there may be 0 other items (either PL or organic) shown below the feedback module or alternatively there may be 25 other items (no scrolling carousels) that appear to all be organic (You May Also Like).

So in theory, any time someone is seeing that experience vs the typical one, we're talking ~50-70+ less impressions on other listings - the question remains whether or not this is a widespread change that could potentially be at least a contributing factor in the drops in impressions people are seeing the last few days.

In all versions, the typical PL ad rows above the description are still there, so it's not like they have gotten rid of them completely - just the ones that are lower down the page and are probably less likely to actually have been being viewed any way if buyers didn't scroll down that far.

So the thought is maybe they are testing keeping the presumably higher value/higher converting ads further up the page but removing some or all of the ads further down and either not showing any items or showing fewer items that are presumably organic (but may also be halo).

[nuclearomen]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@nuclearomen wrote:

@valueaddedresource the only change to PL was suppose to be the inclusion of PLD into PLS - even though that was already active before the update, they were suppose to update the campaign pages, but they haven't, I started a new campaign 2 days ago (fixed, i don't do their insane rates). 

It would still not make sense (or pay much) for them to remove sponsored ads and replace with organic, and then keep the same amount of ads on the listings... i mean in a ebay view, those ads aren't making them extra. Halo ads wouldn't work well in the scenario because they know most items are not searched but found on listings through the ads, in order to make it halo, one has to visit a listing on the sponsored and then they say it was halo when they click any other prompted listings organic ad

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@nuclearomen but that's the thing, with what we are seeing here, eBay is *not* keeping the same amount of ads on the listing.

The most important part of what we are seeing here, imo, is the changes to what is shown below the feedback module - the typical experience has been that area usually has 70+ other items (if you count the scrolling modules) with multiple rows of various PL groupings as well as maybe some organic rows.

What we have been noticing the last few days is that, depending on browser/login or incognito etc., there may be 0 other items (either PL or organic) shown below the feedback module or alternatively there may be 25 other items (no scrolling carousels) that appear to all be organic (You May Also Like).

So in theory, any time someone is seeing that experience vs the typical one, we're talking ~50-70+ less impressions on other listings - the question remains whether or not this is a widespread change that could potentially be at least a contributing factor in the drops in impressions people are seeing the last few days.

In all versions, the typical PL ad rows above the description are still there, so it's not like they have gotten rid of them completely - just the ones that are lower down the page and are probably less likely to actually have been being viewed any way if buyers didn't scroll down that far.

So the thought is maybe they are testing keeping the presumably higher value/higher converting ads further up the page but removing some or all of the ads further down and either not showing any items or showing fewer items that are presumably organic (but may also be halo).

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I know many have that many sponsored ads on listings lower down, mine never have. That is a category thing and music never had 70+, like said, i'm seeing the usual amount on my listings in incog window. However, I see zero while viewing my listings logged in, there are the ads above the description... truthfully never paid attention to that because those listings don't look that way to others when they view, only to you when viewing you own listings not in incog. 

The issue with this whole organic idea is that it's wasting time and money for both seller and platform. Like said, they know majority of sales happen from views on listings not search, so if they replace those ads with organic how does one or the platform show sponsored ads and then what's the point of even having PLs anymore? That's what I mean, if the real-estate that sells the PLs  is being used  for organic then there is no point to using PL if the views/placement of them are now limited. 

One can only shrug their shoulders and the great idk emoji 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@nuclearomen  My best guess (and it's nothing more than that) is these are NOT true organic listings, they are halo organic listings. And if you want your item to show up on the page---either as a Sponsored listing OR a halo organic listing, that means you must still put it into a PLS campaign. Keep in mind that even before this change, ebay could choose to show your item as a Sponsored or organic PL listing...so they were already occasionally  showing a PL listing as organic. Now those organic listings (since the halo change) have a somewhat better chance of collecting the PL fee. 

However, at this point, ebay hasn't even confirmed whether this is a test or whether the listings are organic or not, so pretty much whatever we say is just speculation.

[valueaddedresource]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

The issue with this whole organic idea is that it's wasting time and money for both seller and platform. Like said, they know majority of sales happen from views on listings not search, so if they replace those ads with organic how does one or the platform show sponsored ads and then what's the point of even having PLs anymore? That's what I mean, if the real-estate that sells the PLs  is being used  for organic then there is no point to using PL if the views/placement of them are now limited. 

One can only shrug their shoulders and the great idk emoji 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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@nuclearomen we know the majority of PL sales happen from listings not search....what we don't know (but eBay can very likely tell from internal tracking and analytics) is what part of the View Item page is responsible for driving most of those sales.

What you're saying makes sense assuming there's a relatively even distribution where ads on any part of the listing page are leading to clicks and sales....in that case you're absolutely right it would not make sense to remove them.

But what if the reality is that the modules above the description are responsible for 90% of PL clicks and sales and the 70+ below the feedback module are only 10% (completely made up numbers just for hypothetical consideration).

We might think eBay wouldn't want to lose even that 10% but it may be worth it....especially if the average ad rates for those higher converting modules increase due to sellers competing for more limited real estate on the page.

Because PLS is pay per sale, a bunch of "junk impressions" that may not even indicate a buyer actually scrolled down and saw the ads don't do anyone, including eBay, any good really. Focusing on maximizing the highest performing ad slots and getting rid of the rest might just make some kind of crazy sense....or it could just be that Jamie is out of ideas and throwing anything against the wall hoping something will stick even if it doesn't make much sense. 😂

I actually hope I'm completely off base with this thinking - if it's at all correct, I'm afraid for what that could mean for eBay's promise they were going to get rid of ads above the description once the new View Item page design is finalized....but it's the only thing I can think of that might make sense out of what we've been observing the last few days.

Unfortunately, since eBay obviously doesn't care to engage in this discussion, like you said we're all just left with  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[nuclearomen]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@nuclearomen  My best guess (and it's nothing more than that) is these are NOT true organic listings, they are halo organic listings. And if you want your item to show up on the page---either as a Sponsored listing OR a halo organic listing, that means you must still put it into a PLS campaign. Keep in mind that even before this change, ebay could choose to show your item as a Sponsored or organic PL listing...so they were already occasionally  showing a PL listing as organic. Now those organic listings (since the halo change) have a somewhat better chance of collecting the PL fee. 

However, at this point, ebay hasn't even confirmed whether this is a test or whether the listings are organic or not, so pretty much whatever we say is just speculation.

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques idk, my thought is halo listing isn't suppose to be "placed" - the definition of a Halo listing is a listing clicked on after one visited a sellers Promoted (or Sponsored) listing, then all other listings a buyer clicks on become Halo listing and can be charged the PL fee. If you understand what I mean, no listing is Promoted unless seller Promotes it. No listing starts as a Halo listing unless buyer visits a Sponsored and then hits an organic listing of listing that is promoted becomes then a Halo. 

And now, if all this isn't funny and confusing enough, they place "halo" listings on sellers listings to get a fee from a sale, that would have the fee attached anyways, so why not just show the Sponsored ad? Am I the only one who finds this completely silly and dumb? 

When they told us about the Halo function I said every sale will just have a PL fee attached anymore. People argued that wasn't the case...well let's have a looksie shall we? 

Above the Red Line is last Month PL fees, Below This Month, not every sale, but darn near it! 

OH and the one start this month - those N/A's are because I paused campaign

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource  That's my thought as well. I've been saying for a long time that impressions don't mean all that much, views and of course sales are more important. I recently put about 500 listing into a PLS fixed rate campaign (with a pretty low rate) and it is interesting to see that the item with the most impressions is a Haynes car manual. (No views, but hundreds of impressions, far more than anything else) I can't say why, but I'd guess because ebay has been tossing it into a lot of spots where the Haynes name is in the search, or the name of the make of the car, etc. ...a lot of these views are almost certainly junk views, with little chance of converting into a sale. 

I do think ebay might have concluded that the original purpose of PLS---increase sales velocity, while also increasing some Ads revenue---has been displaced by the desire to increase ad revenue no matter what. They may have decided they need to get more selective, better targeted and less of the shotgun approach, if they are ever going to do a really good job of increasing sales velocity . And I wonder if all of this might somehow be connected with the "forecasting" tool they announced in the Seller Update...that too seemed to me to be aimed at convincing sellers to be more selective to begin with.

It's funny...the Ads team has apparently been making the rounds of some of the Seller Meet Ups, presumably promoting Ads....but they can't come here to answer some questions that really need answers? 

[nuclearomen]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@nuclearomen wrote:

The issue with this whole organic idea is that it's wasting time and money for both seller and platform. Like said, they know majority of sales happen from views on listings not search, so if they replace those ads with organic how does one or the platform show sponsored ads and then what's the point of even having PLs anymore? That's what I mean, if the real-estate that sells the PLs  is being used  for organic then there is no point to using PL if the views/placement of them are now limited. 

One can only shrug their shoulders and the great idk emoji 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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@nuclearomen we know the majority of PL sales happen from listings not search....what we don't know (but eBay can very likely tell from internal tracking and analytics) is what part of the View Item page is responsible for driving most of those sales.

What you're saying makes sense assuming there's a relatively even distribution where ads on any part of the listing page are leading to clicks and sales....in that case you're absolutely right it would not make sense to remove them.

But what if the reality is that the modules above the description are responsible for 90% of PL clicks and sales and the 70+ below the feedback module are only 10% (completely made up numbers just for hypothetical consideration).

We might think eBay wouldn't want to lose even that 10% but it may be worth it....especially if the average ad rates for those higher converting modules increase due to sellers competing for more limited real estate on the page.

Because PLS is pay per sale, a bunch of "junk impressions" that may not even indicate a buyer actually scrolled down and saw the ads don't do anyone, including eBay, any good really. Focusing on maximizing the highest performing ad slots and getting rid of the rest might just make some kind of crazy sense....or it could just be that Jamie is out of ideas and throwing anything against the wall hoping something will stick even if it doesn't make much sense. 😂

I actually hope I'm completely off base with this thinking - if it's at all correct, I'm afraid for what that could mean for eBay's promise they were going to get rid of ads above the description once the new View Item page design is finalized....but it's the only thing I can think of that might make sense out of what we've been observing the last few days.

Unfortunately, since eBay obviously doesn't care to engage in this discussion, like you said we're all just left with  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Anymore, top of listing above description, we already know that because many people complained about how many sponsored ads were on the page, specifically below the description and many have said straight out, they don't even scroll that part of the listing anymore - so it's perfectly reasonable to say the PL coming from listings would be top of listing. That doesn't explain why they changed it, placing anything there won't cause sales if no one is actually looking. 

If they are Halo ads then they aren't losing anything, rather being deceptive to what the ads are, instead of just placing Sponsored ads there and everyone know they are sponsored. If Halo ads, then they would still register as impressions on PL campaign, but impressions are topped at 10K daily for everyone it seems this past few days, which stated before, algo's shouldn't be doing that for everyone, there is some kind of internal error going on beyond just algo, programming issue somewhere. 

Further, doing the thing with the ads on listings is one thing, the huge decline in PL's another, but seemingly suspicious it's all connected in some way and what do we hear from ebay? NOTHING, not peep, with their usual tactic let the weekend come in and flop because of whatever we did/doing atm. Think for once they need to issue some info/answers! 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@nuclearomen  Just to be sure we're on the same page:

There are two types of organic listings.

The first, which I call a "true organic" listing, is NOT in a promoted listing campaign. If the Buyer clicks on my sponsored listing A and within 30 days clicks on and buys my "true organic" listing B....there is NO Promoted Listing fee. NONE.

The Second, which I call a "halo organic" listing is IN a promoted listing campaign. A classic example of such a listing : a listing shown in my store. In my store, the listing is not shown as sponsored, even though it is in a PL campaign. Now  if the Buyer clicks on my sponsored listing A and within 30 days comes to my store and clicks on and buys my "halo organic" listing B in my sore....there IS a PL fee. Whatever the fee is for Listing B will be charged. 

This means that a true organic listing will never have a PLS fee. A halo organic listing might, but ONLY if the buyer had touched on one of my other listings within the past 30 days. If I'm a small seller with only a few listings and they are very diverse, there' s a very good chance that whoever buys my Item B never touched any of my listings before, and so NO fee will be charged.

[nuclearomen]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@nuclearomen  Just to be sure we're on the same page:

There are two types of organic listings.

The first, which I call a "true organic" listing, is NOT in a promoted listing campaign. If the Buyer clicks on my sponsored listing A and within 30 days clicks on and buys my "true organic" listing B....there is NO Promoted Listing fee. NONE.

The Second, which I call a "halo organic" listing is IN a promoted listing campaign. A classic example of such a listing : a listing shown in my store. In my store, the listing is not shown as sponsored, even though it is in a PL campaign. Now  if the Buyer clicks on my sponsored listing A and within 30 days comes to my store and clicks on and buys my "halo organic" listing B in my sore....there IS a PL fee. Whatever the fee is for Listing B will be charged. 

This means that a true organic listing will never have a PLS fee. A halo organic listing might, but ONLY if the buyer had touched on one of my other listings within the past 30 days. If I'm a small seller with only a few listings and they are very diverse, there' s a very good chance that whoever buys my Item B never touched any of my listings before, and so NO fee will be charged.

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uhha, and like I said before, look at the fees I posted for PL per sale, pretty much every sale, so where people believe there is no fee coming for "true organic" or whatever want to call it idk... every sale will have PL fee, that was the whole point to Halo and as you see, it's working great for them. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@nuclearomen  Again, to be very clear, I have no idea if this test (if that's what it is) has anything to do with the impressions decline people are seeing. And ebay has not responded to our pleas, so here we are. 

What I have suggested it, IF this "test" is widespread, it MIGHT be a factor in the impressions decline. It is new, many buyers might not even notice the "see all" which opens the other pages...and if those pages aren't opened, then there are no impressions from those pages. So, we go from , say, 100 impressions per listing to, what , 10 or20? I didn't do a count. But again, this would require that this be pretty widespread to have a large effect, and as yet, we don't even know how many people are seeing the impression decline.

What we need is real information from ebay, but ebay has once again decided to leave us in the dark, for reasons I can't begin to fathom.