Doubled promoted listing standard ad rate and sales dropped drastically

[sallyjeffers257]

I have had my listings promoted at a fixed rate with Promoted listing standard at 5% for awhile now.  On September 10 I ended that campaign and started a dynamic rate Promoted listing standard for my listings.  So that is pretty much double the 5% 

On September 8 my total impressions were 376,746

On September 10 my total impressions were 67, 630

That is a 309,116 REDUCTION in impressions AFTER DOUBLING my ad rate!!

My sales have tanked as a result and it has been almost 2 weeks and nothing has changed.

I am scared to mess with this because I don't want to start over any kind of grace period and I have tried to wait this out but I am starting to get desperate because my sales are so drastically bad after doing this.

Has anyone else had this experience? 

[kensgiftshop]

1200 in the last 90 days, I wouldn't call that drastically bad.

[reallynicestamps]

I have had my listings promoted at a fixed....  On September 10 I ended that campaign and started a dynamic rate Promoted listing standard for my listings. 

What were your sales like in Aug/Sept 2023? 2022? (skip the pandemic outliers) 2019?

Might this be a normal fluctuation?

If you tried something new, and it didn't work, or backfired, don't do it any more.

Go back to the system that did work.

It's not rocket surgery.

[sallyjeffers257]

In August/September 2022 and 2023 they were ok but in August/September of 2024 they were a lot lower than they were the previous years…That is why I decided to try to increase my ad rate to increase sales.

I just need to have it explained to me how my impressions can have such a big drop the day after INCREASING my ad rate from 5% to 10% +
I want to see if anyone else has had this experience with promoted listings and how they handled it….do they eventually pick up? I don’t know if I should wait it out a little longer or reduce my ad rate back down to 5%
Im scared if I reduce my ad rate then it may get worse but I’ve already waited almost two weeks and nothing has really changed 

[broto_64]

Same here, except I never made a change.
The decline in sales on top of you making that change may just be coincidental.
My sales are near zero, I've had my campaign running and was doing good.
I did stop the campaign after 2 weeks of it, then started another, no real change.

[reallynicestamps]

@kensgiftshop 

1200 in 90 days but only 100 in the past 10 days.

OH! Wait a minute.

The OP thinks that impressions are the same as sales!

Their sales have dropped from an average of 13.5 a day to 10 a day.

There is no easy way to know if the value of those sales is higher, lower, or the same.

I suspect that sales are slightly off for reasons unconnected to the promotional rate.

But while I use PL, I'm too cheap to go over the 2% minimum fee and even then use PL on less than a third of my listings.

YMMV.

[sallyjeffers257]

No I do not think impressions are the same as sales….the important thing is the fact that the impressions dropped after increasing my ad rate

Increasing the ad rate should INCREASE my impressions for sure whether or not my sales increase or not

The fact that my impressions dropped by 300,000 the  day after increasing my ad rate and has stayed that way now for an extended period of time is troubling to me because that means that my stuff isn’t even showing up on pages 

[noesatticonline]

That's real strange I've heard that there's a start up time when ending and restarting promotions but ten days is a long time. I had my Promoted Stores end on me by accident, but things restarted quick after I restarted (about 48 hours). I also recently increased by 5 points. I run promotional shipping, have coupons, and send offers. 

[lakefor94]

That promotion is not working correctly.  I would kill it and start another at 5% if that was working before.

I normally give it 24 hours or more before starting another. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@sallyjeffers257  Unfortunately, this being ebay, there's no way to really know what is going on there. For whatever reason, your ad campaign does not seem to be performing properly, and I would suggest ending it. You could try going back to your 5% fixed rate, or, since you appear to be willing to give ebay 10%, you could try 10% at fixed rate rather than dynamic rate. It could be there's a glitch in ebay's handling of dynamic rate campaigns.

As I say, I don't think there's anyway to know for sure, but whatever the cause may be, you are not getting the desired results, so I wouldn't spend time asking "why", I would just change it now.

[isaiah53-57]

Ebay being ebay, the only thing that seems really off here is your willingness to give the site around 25% of the ENTIRE TRANSACTION in selling fees.

Fees that would likely equate to 35% to 40% of the items selling price for a large number of sales on this site.

[vintage-camerastuff]

I would start by reducing it to 2%.   I doubt if you would see any difference between 2 and 5%.   I run 2% for a couple of weeks each month and get a nice spike in sales.  Start low and work up until you see no change.

[12345jamesstamps]

I do the 2% promoted rate to get on others ads who are selling.

It has been a brutal week for me even listings a lot of new items.

I feel like I get knocked off for a few days domestically by eBay  and have a few international sales and then it gets back to domestic sales.

I think eBay offered this great discount in UK cause I am getting more than usual sales there.

I don't get a mix of domestic and international in one day. It's either all domestic for 4 days and then 3 days of International sales.

My normal sales returned today.

The last 3 days was brutal...just 2 sales which has never been that low.

And I don't do the coupon or discount you do...which for me wouldn't work.

My buyers prefer the buy one thing at a time.

[selsa84]

If you reduce the pls amount you'll probably see a large drop in sales, views and impressions. Ever since they changed the campaign layout things have gotten really bad. My impressions have dropped and sales are about 25% down this month. I once upped my pls to 20% and sales also tanked for me and impressions went down also. 

[spendingcents26150]

I would be of the school of thought a couple of ways:

1) A malfunction happening when the campaign was changed. Perhaps you should bite the bullet, and try again to set it to your desired rate.

2) There may be more competition at the 10% spot. I am speaking now as a web developer, not as a reseller. I can only explain this is real world terms because I am OOP.  I am speaking from experience with ad rotation and promotions.
Not looking at your inventory I couldn't say that is an exact cause but think of it this way.

Ebay is a giant barrel of water with apples. All apples have to be seen at some time so Ebay (algorithm) places a balloon on each one that rises it to the top more often than say the ones that have no balloon, some balloons have more air so they rise higher more often. If many balloons are inflated to the same amount then there will be more competition to get the top of the barrel when it is time. 

Just like with a search engine can lie and tell you that you will be first in line but the truth is you are only first in line when the other firsts have dropped off.