Comment on the Upcoming changes to Promoted Listings ad fees

[desertmodels_uae]

From 1st of June 2022 the basis for charging for promoted listing will change

from: based on item final value 

to: based on total sale value (i.e. item price + shipping + any taxes). 

This change means that selling using promoted listing will lead either to increase in item price on the listing or if a seller to opt not to factor it in will mean less profit. 

There are long list of questions that come-up to mind: 

1. Is promoted listing worth using it? lately I noticed that majority of orders I am getting comes from promoted listing and that may mean the level of buyer conducting search (or have saved search) dropped down significantly (perhaps more  people are less interested in the site) 

2. What is eBay identity,  Is it a marketplace for retailers or a marketplace for selling secondary collectible items? 

3. These on-going increases in fees are driving prices up, especially in the secondary market segment as sellers are outpricing themselves and making what they are offering less attractive to buyers. Is this what you want to do with inflation hitting everywhere and buyers having less income they can allocate for buying from eBay? 

4. What is the logic behind charging promoted listing fees on taxes? There is no economic justification to charge promotion fees on a pure intermediary service (tax collection) that have zero value add to seller. Same for shipping ( I know that some seller load his margin to shipping but that can be easily identified with the wealth of data available that eBay analytics can use) 

The other day, I cleaned the list of saved sellers and removed more than 15 of them because they don't list anymore on eBay. Wonder if their reason to stop selling was related to how the platform fees are getting complex and keep increasing. 

[katzrul15]

@desertmodels_uae 

Several threads on this today - thankfully, well ahead of the email received today, e-Bay made the announcement that this change was coming.

I think it depends on what you sell and what percentages you use in your campaigns.  Am I excited about this change?  Absolutely not - we use PLs daily.  

We are running a few calcs to see how this might impact us on the listings that are not free shipping and how best this "new" version of PLs might or might not help our sales.  We have genuine concerns that we could promote OR do a sale, but not both.  Right now, we use a tandem approach at time.  

One thing is for certain, it can be a chunk of change a Seller gives up starting 6/1.  Interested too if others have thought more about how best to offset these FVFs changes coming AND all the shipping cost changes in place and to come as well? 

For many items, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a price-point to compete.

[flyingmvp]

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@desertmodels_uae wrote:

4. What is the logic behind charging promoted listing fees on taxes?

One simple answer, even more $$$ for ebay less $$$ for sellers. 

Fee on tax on top of extra promotion fee...

Hopefully they are running out of ideas of how to milk even more the sellers who are still here.

 Ebay new and updated money grab will force us to increase prices and make Ebay even less attractive then before.

[m60driver]

For some items using promoted listings is about the only way to get views and a sale.  For many of us small sellers listing vintage, collectibles, NOS, etc, promoted listings are largely useless.  But when I make a buying mistake and purchase a widget which has lots and lots of competition,  using promoted listings is a good way to at least break close to even and get most of my money back.

[desertmodels_uae]

Sure they are running out of ideas and charging promotion fees on taxes/shipping is the proof. 

This is exactly what bankrupt states when they ride the way down: they start taxing the tax and along with each tax there are surcharges (e.g. overtime surcharge, fuel surcharge, environment protection surcharge...etc.) until citizens reach the zero sum point: income from staying at home (i.e. do nothing and pay no tax) is equal to income from doing any business (be it employed or have your own business) .

These on-going changes to FVF accelerated as a result of: 

1. Decision to move to managed payments which increased the cost of doing business (contrary to the marketing jargon claims)

2. Rolling out VAT collections for other countries (especially the EU with their insane VAT rates) 

Above two changes made the prices offered on platform less attractive for buyers, sales dropping, and with that eBay revenue soon will ride the way down.  So the accountant behind the scene, came up with the idea to charge PL promotion fees on shipping and tax. 

eBay needs to hire economist not accountants to formulate the revenue strategy for the platform.  Accountants don't understand the logic behind "Laffer Curve"

[siamjane8]

Only seals the deal in concrete that I will never do promoted listings again. I have tried a few different campaigns over the years and basically saw very little improvement in sales because i sell vintage items that people search for anyway. Any small boost in sales was negated by the PL charge and that will only get worse now.   I also believe wholeheartedly that the PL program has lead to the search engine being so bad and not showing relevant results anymore.  its all PL that have nothing to do with what I search for so why would I promote my items if they are then shown to people that are not looking for my item anyway.  I understand that if you sell phone cases- you need away to get to the top but its just not worth it for me.  I thought we were already paying ebay to show our items?......  They equate it to an advertising fee but if I pay for advertising, I have control of where when and who sees it (billboard, tv-radio ad, mailers, etc.  Ebay charges PL fees with absolutely no transparency what-so-ever.  The whole thing is a scam and there is no way to prove anything the way its set up.   

[desertmodels_uae]

One of the serious issues with Transparency is I sold an item, the sale was recorded from listing (i.e. not PL). After few weeks eBay charged me for PL.. the eBay customer service rep informed me that it is a mistake they didn't charge me the PL fees with the order due. 

My understanding that PL listing is a sub listing (or copy) to the original PL with different ID. So if the buyer placed order on the PL Listing then the eBay billing system should have charged the PL Fees at the same day not after few weeks.

So is it really true I orders I got charged for PL Fees where really from PL Listing? No way I will know because eBay orders shows the original listing ID not the PL Listing ID. 

Going to another point: checking all my Promoted listing what I find is the clicks are coming from eBay, there is very little clicks (maximum clicks were 18 for 1 listing only 6 month old) comes from external sources. So what is the point of promoting the listing on the eBay search engine to anybody without any mean of targeting (either empowered to the seller or by the algorithm setup). 

Many times I tested the search on eBay and what I find that the algorithm push PL Listings on something within the top category not to the narrowed search parameters I entered. This mean, as you wrote, the PL Listings is reaching to buyers who are not interested in the listing and along with that it fail to generate sales over long period of time.

Long outstanding listing will never generate sales, unless a buyer narrow down his search to all parameters entered in the listing specifics. eBay had a feature to list item for 30 days and allow you to renew it or remove it.. now this doesn't exists and you have to follow manually on the under performing listing to terminate them and list them as new in a hope it will show higher in the searches. 

So what parameters the algorithm has for the long outstanding listings (be it Promoted or not)? I believe they are assigned lower priority and pushed really down in any search results

All of these bias in search engine, promotion algorithm is causing one thing: Sales is declining and with that eBay main source of revenue (FVF) is declining. However the accountant behind the scene doesn't understand this because he see constant revenue coming from subscriptions fees. 

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@desertmodels_uae wrote:

One of the serious issues with Transparency is I sold an item, the sale was recorded from listing (i.e. not PL). After few weeks eBay charged me for PL.. the eBay customer service rep informed me that it is a mistake they didn't charge me the PL fees with the order due. 

My understanding that PL listing is a sub listing (or copy) to the original PL with different ID. So if the buyer placed order on the PL Listing then the eBay billing system should have charged the PL Fees at the same day not after few weeks.

So is it really true I orders I got charged for PL Fees where really from PL Listing? No way I will know because eBay orders shows the original listing ID not the PL Listing ID. 

Going to another point: checking all my Promoted listing what I find is the clicks are coming from eBay, there is very little clicks (maximum clicks were 18 for 1 listing only 6 month old) comes from external sources. So what is the point of promoting the listing on the eBay search engine to anybody without any mean of targeting (either empowered to the seller or by the algorithm setup). 

Many times I tested the search on eBay and what I find that the algorithm push PL Listings on something within the top category not to the narrowed search parameters I entered. This mean, as you wrote, the PL Listings is reaching to buyers who are not interested in the listing and along with that it fail to generate sales over long period of time.

Long outstanding listing will never generate sales, unless a buyer narrow down his search to all parameters entered in the listing specifics. eBay had a feature to list item for 30 days and allow you to renew it or remove it.. now this doesn't exists and you have to follow manually on the under performing listing to terminate them and list them as new in a hope it will show higher in the searches. 

So what parameters the algorithm has for the long outstanding listings (be it Promoted or not)? I believe they are assigned lower priority and pushed really down in any search results

All of these bias in search engine, promotion algorithm is causing one thing: Sales is declining and with that eBay main source of revenue (FVF) is declining. However the accountant behind the scene doesn't understand this because he see constant revenue coming from subscriptions fees. 

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Not sure how the billing takes place on dot com but on dot ca when I have a random promoted listing sell the fees come off as a separate line item and pulled immediately. If there is no balance at the time it comes from my bank account. It should all be bundled together as part of (1) transaction. Not separate line items and definitely not after the fact down the road or by ooopsie. It's similar to the confusing way a cancelled order is handled where customer has paid but item was NEVER shipped. It should be a straight easy peasy reversal. Not a debit from your bank. It's still processing.

-Lotz

[lepke1979]

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

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Not sure how the billing takes place on dot com but on dot ca when I have a random promoted listing sell the fees come off as a separate line item and pulled immediately. If there is no balance at the time it comes from my bank account. It should all be bundled together as part of (1) transaction. Not separate line items and definitely not after the fact down the road or by ooopsie. It's similar to the confusing way a cancelled order is handled where customer has paid but item was NEVER shipped. It should be a straight easy peasy reversal. Not a debit from your bank. It's still processing.

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.com...It's not often. But I've seen it sometimes take close to an hour or two for the promoted fee to pop up in payments. Was kind of an oh, guess this one was promoted. But normally it seems to be fairly immediate to a few minutes. And maybe after a days if it's still negative. It'll bill my card.

[lepke1979]

1. Is promoted listing worth using it? lately I noticed that majority of orders I am getting comes from promoted listing and that may mean the level of buyer conducting search (or have saved search) dropped down significantly (perhaps more  people are less interested in the site) 

Hard to say and really depends on the category or number of competitors. People like to remember the good old days when things here were simpler (heck, even Amazon was a lot simpler and look at them now). But there were probably also a lot less sellers here too. So you probably didn't need to promote as much if at all. Whereas, now, were I too search for something. I might get close to a million listings all wanting me to buy from them.

eBay will try to help choose listings for you based on various factors. Price, distance, seller ratings, seller brushes their teeth multiple times a day, usual time to ship, etc. And then you might see a few promoted listings scattered about that normally might not make that initial list of 60 items. Same may go for if you decide to sort by other factors.

In my case, I will usually promote the listing just so it has a chance to be seen in the search eBay defaults to in case I don't make the initial cut. The other reason, even if it's not needed and admittedly it might not work this way.  To possibly show up in searches that might not be as related. In hopes the buyer might change their mind on what they were initially looking for and/or get them to look at what else I might be selling. Could just me being hopeful though.

[desertmodels_uae]

What I think eBay need to do is the following: 

1. They need to invest in improving the search engine so buyers in fewer steps can shortlist what they are looking for

2. They must remove redundancy between the different categories so everything is listed on the same category. One visible example is Aircraft Diecast Models: on eBay.com (the US as well Global Sellers platform) are listed under toys/diecast/aircrafts while on eBay.uk is listed under collectible  category. The exclusion criterion of a listing should be solely based on country exclusion list created by the seller. 

3. Promoted listing should allow seller to target based on parameters (like any modern targeting ads) 

4. They must split it into two types: eBay community targeting and External Targeting

5. For eBay community targeting, they must not show the promoted listing in search results where parameters are matching the item listing specifics. Instead empower the seller to target buyers searching on other categories. For example, diecast aircrafts, allow me to target buyers with search / buying history in the aviation collectibles.

6. For external targeting they must have list of partners who will allow listing ads to show in their platforms/website. 

7. The charging basis/rates can be different for eBay community and external targeting

8. Promoted listing must have unique ID that is shown when best offer is received and when order is placed. They should not load everything on the original listing as this a cause behind lower trust in the PL feature

and lastly, they must seriously reconsider the decision to charge PL fees on total order value because of reasons I listed in my first post and for following additional reasons:

1. Complexity for seller shipping to multiple locations: different shipping rates and VAT/Sales Tax rates means minimum price and auto-accept price are not possible to establish

2. Solution 1 to problem in Point 1: don't setup auto-accept price. This means seller have to check each offer and decide if will accept offer or counter/decline it. More time/effort to manage the store and longer time between buyer making offer and seller accepting it can cause sale to drop

3. Solution 2: Opting for taking a contingency based on the highest shipping cost and highest tax rate. This means the listing price will be less attractive to buyers hence less chances to sell. Example: why US buyers visiting my stores should see prices based on UK shipping rates and taxes (US Shipping rate for 1 K.G parcel is US$ 29.55 while UK is US$ 34.5 and tax rate in US is max 10% while in UK is 20%) ? 

4. Alternatively to point 3, drop countries from locations list and that for seller means less potential buyers.

This whole move is having problems in all sort of directions. I am confident this a decision was made by accountants (with full respect to the profession) without evaluating all issues it will cause and the potential impact on eBay revenue (which I predict will drop). 

Finally: Global e-Commerce is a joke. It turned from a mean to exchange goods and services faster and at competitive prices to a banking industry (where none B.S economists are saying that the value-add perception about the industry is in fact a negative value-add should be subtracted from GDP) 

I guess it is time for the industry to have e-commerce platform that brings back the good old days and use blockchain/crypto payments to settle the transaction. 

Rest my case

[steveberta]

I am not a fan. I like the old way of just set the rate and be done with it. 

[mn467462]

Ebay are thieves. They already take far too much of a fee. I used promote once, and only ended up making $5 on a $10 item. That's why I stopped selling on this platform after 15 years. I'm sick of it

[kh-belma]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.