@siamjane8 I've been seeing some speculation going around with some YouTubers about this and honestly, some of what I've seen strikes me as clickbait fear mongering more than anything.
I've seen some claim in the future Offsite Cost Per Click Ads will be the only way to get any visibility for your eBay items on Google - not making any distinction between organic and paid visibility - and that's just not true.
The vast majority of eBay's traffic is organic (in the past I believe they've said something like 80%+). Here's what Jamie said on the most recent earnings call when asked about competition from Temu and Shein.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4648867-ebay-inc-ebay-q3-2023-earnings-call-transcript
Yeah. No, I don't think it's in particular any specific other competitive thing. Like your question on Temu, we’ve not seen a significant impact from Temu or Shein on our business. When we look at our cross-border trade as Steve talked about, it continues to remain healthy. We believe that's because of our differentiated strategy and our approach.
If you remember, we've been talking about this for a while. We've been strategically moving away from low quality, low ASP items, and that hasn't been a focus for us for years.
I think the other big difference for our platform, Ross, is that we’re – a vast, vast majority of our traffic is organic. So I think as others are implicated by kind of the paid search or other marketing spend out there in the market, we're less so and more resilient, just because so much of our traffic is driven organically on the platform.
While there may be fluctuations and changes coming this year that could impact organic performance, Google is not going to suddenly stop organically indexing almost 2 Billion listing URLs and eBay is not going to block Google crawlers to prevent them from indexing those pages.
Bottom line, I do not believe there is any scenario where pay per click advertising will be the only way for your items to be visible and discoverable on Google, period.
Now, if we're just talking about paid Google placements, I do agree to some extent that eBay wants to shift sellers into the new cost per click program as much as possible - but even there, I do not believe they will make it the only option going forward, at least not any time soon (this year).
For many years eBay proudly patted themselves on the back for the fact that while appearing in Google ads wasn't actually free, they enabled millions of listings weekly to be shown in those spots without charging sellers anything extra, because it was an "investment".
Just one example from 2020:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Traffic-Month-How-to-show-up-in-Google-Shopping/ba-p/309...
"Unlike on some other platforms, eBay sellers pay nothing extra to appear in Google Shopping. It’s included in your eBay fees, and fixed priced listings are automatically eligible to get pulled into Google Shopping results."
"Every week, eBay millions of site visits from paid-search marketing, including Google Shopping. Getting listings to show up in Google Shopping isn’t free, but like we said before, our sellers pay nothing extra for this exposure. It’s an investment eBay makes in our sellers, and one we know is worth it."
When they introduced External Placement for Promoted Listings Standard in 2021, many sellers were concerned that meant eBay was moving away from the previous "free" inclusion in Google ads and would be giving a preference to PLS ads for those slots.
eBay was fairly vague about it at the time and simply said PLS External would provide "incremental visibility" across the web and that if sellers opted out, their listings would still be eligible to appear in Google ad placements (though of course eligible does not mean guaranteed).
https://www.ebayads.com/2021/08/04/announcing-external-promoted-listings-connecting-with-shoppers-ac...
I saw a lot of the same concerns being raised when Offsite Ads beta was first introduced last year as well, again believing that while technically listings not enrolled in any advertising may still be eligible, eBay is including them less and less and that those placements may possibly be reserved mostly for vertical focus category products or other items where eBay may still feel it is a worthwhile "investment".
As eBay opens up Offsite Ads to more sellers, it's possible we might eventually see some shifts where PLS External placements are reduced in favor of Offsite Ads.
With PLS External, eBay only collects their ad fee if the item sells but they are still paying Google ad fees regardless. With Offsite Ads being a cost per click model, in theory they are covering the Google ad fees and making some profit whether or not the item sells. So I can definitely see why eBay would prefer to get sellers to adopt Offsite Ads instead.
However, eBay also knows that many sellers are risk averse and for the most part prefer the Cost Per Sale model over Cost Per Click.
Just look at how this has played out with onsite ads Promoted Listings Standard vs Advanced CPC - while eBay has been pushing to try to get sellers to use Advanced, the vast majority who use Promoted Listings at all are sticking with Standard and eBay knows they'd be killing the golden goose if they got rid of it.
Similarly, I don't believe eBay will get rid of Promoted Listings Standard External placements all together either - again, while they'd certainly rather be making that sweet pay per click money, they'd also rather get something than nothing and given the importance of ad revenue across the board to their financial reports and Wall Street sentiment, they can't really afford to lose steam on their main "workhorse" Promoted Listings Standard program.
The "ideal" that I believe eBay is probably really shooting for with offsite/external ads is likely similar to what they are shooting for with onsite ads - a mix of different ad products to fit a variety of business models and seller needs/concerns in hopes that sellers will adopt at least one option, putting more revenue in eBay's coffers.
And just like with the various onsite ad options, eBay may use promotional offers, fee credits, algorithms, "suggested rates" and other methods to try to influence seller behavior and/or engineer specific outcomes that they believe are most beneficial to their bottom line. I just don't personally see how doing away with PL Standard External would serve that purpose at this time or any time in the near future.
Of course eBay wants to offer the CPC option to those who will use it because they may stand to make more money. But for the (I believe) vast majority of sellers who would simply not pay to promote externally at all if that was the only option, eBay would much rather still be able to make an extra percentage of the sale than nothing.
So my personal prediction is a bit more nuanced -
I do believe we will continue to see less and less "free" inclusion in Google ads, especially if players like Shein and Temu continue to be willing to burn giant wads of cash, driving up the cost of competing for that ad space.
I don't believe Promoted Listings Standard External is going anywhere, but I do think it's possible eBay may become much more targeted/selective on placements with preference going to key vertical focus category products and non-focus vertical sellers likely seeing a ratcheting up of ad rates to maintain the same levels of external promotion they have received previously.
And finally, I do believe eBay will also continue pushing sellers to adopt Offsite Ads Cost Per Click through various promotions, PR campaigns, and possibly even algorithmic tweaks in some areas.
