Finally have Sales/but had to take PLs (Promoted Std) to 10-12% for ALL listings to Make it Happen

[katzrul15]

The title really says it all.

Have sales, but my PL percentages are killing me.  Played with it over and over on percentages and when I lower then to even 8%, sales stop.  At the 10-12% range, we have consistent sales.

Really dreading then the FALL update, additional fees and USPS increases.  Not certain how we (us) are going to be able to do this and remain profitable overall??  Anyone else concerned about this?

[nuclearomen]

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@ladyindecadence wrote:

It appears something was changed on the 1st and and fully integrated by the 6th PLS impressions went much higher the ever before then started to fall and have continued to fall. This seems very similar to whatever ebay did in early may of this year that killed sales for almost two months.

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@ladyindecadence yup. same thing, except I knew what was happening and ended campaign before it got to rock bottom and started a new one, that's why my graph goes back up after the fall... it's a glitch in the PLs that when that drastic fall happens you need to end and create a new campaign usually or you'll get what we call "flatlining" (where promoted impressions will ride even with organic) - course I haven't seen any that actually had flatlining but still when they have drastic drop to the bottom like that - something went bad and usually caused by changes they make to PLs. 

[ducks2k]

@ladyindecadence- mildly off-topic, but your graph reminds me of the questionable competence of eBay programmers.  I always look at that graph early in the morning, so not matter what those numbers are actually doing, both lines go to near zero at the right side suggesting the end of the world in impressions. 

So far, I have not been able to get a precise definition of "impression" (official link, not informed speculation).   I really wonder about the purple line which is labelled "organic impressions (promoted)" which almost sounds like an oxymoron.

I notice my graph is different than yours with my two lines tracking at about the same level.  It probably relates to my use of 2% ad rate on a standard campaign.  I am a long way from proving ANY connection between impressions/clicks and sales.

[valueaddedresource]

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@ducks2k wrote:

So far, I have not been able to get a precise definition of "impression" (official link, not informed speculation).   I really wonder about the purple line which is labelled "organic impressions (promoted)" which almost sounds like an oxymoron.

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@ducks2k if you hover over the i in the circle on many of the terms on the reports page, it pops up an info box, like this one for impressions.

eBay basically defines an impression as any time your listing is displayed anywhere publicly accessible on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/sellercenter/growth/promoted-listings/promoted-listings-standard

• Impressions. The number of times your promoted listings have appeared on any eBay site.

Note it does not say anything about whether or not the buyer actually literally sees the ads, simply that it appears on any eBay site.

If eBay has selected one of your ads to be number 73 in a scrolling ad spot, technically that PL still "appeared on an eBay site" and I'm fairly sure they count that as an impression, whether the buyer ever scrolled to it or saw it at all.

Same with ad blockers, whether the buyer actually sees the ad or not is irrelevant based on eBay's own definition, if they put your listing into the deck of ads for a given page or search result, that's an impression.

So if you see impressions go up significantly, but click through and sales do not, that's an indication that your listings are appearing in more places across the eBay site, but are not targeted well and/or may be appearing in places less likely to actually be seen and clicked on, like in one of those scrolling ad spots.

As far as organic (promoted) in theory that should be showing the organic performance only for items that you have enrolled in PL campaigns.  So let's say you have 500 listings, but only 100 in PL campaigns - that chart in the ad dashboard is *supposed* to show stats only for the 100, with promoted impressions in green and organic impressions in purple.

That being said, there has been some pretty convincing evidence put forward by others in the past that chart doesn't always follow that rule and, again in the past, has at times shown organic impressions from all listings, not just ones in the PL campaigns.

I haven't looked into it lately, so can't say 100% for sure if it is working as intended or not right now, but in theory that's what organic (promoted) is supposed to mean.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@ducks2k wrote:

So far, I have not been able to get a precise definition of "impression" (official link, not informed speculation).   I really wonder about the purple line which is labelled "organic impressions (promoted)" which almost sounds like an oxymoron.

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@ducks2k if you hover over the i in the circle on many of the terms on the reports page, it pops up an info box, like this one for impressions.

eBay basically defines an impression as any time your listing is displayed anywhere publicly accessible on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/sellercenter/growth/promoted-listings/promoted-listings-standard

• Impressions. The number of times your promoted listings have appeared on any eBay site.

Note it does not say anything about whether or not the buyer actually literally sees the ads, simply that it appears on any eBay site.

If eBay has selected one of your ads to be number 73 in a scrolling ad spot, technically that PL still "appeared on an eBay site" and I'm fairly sure they count that as an impression, whether the buyer ever scrolled to it or saw it at all.

Same with ad blockers, whether the buyer actually sees the ad or not is irrelevant based on eBay's own definition, if they put your listing into the deck of ads for a given page or search result, that's an impression.

So if you see impressions go up significantly, but click through and sales do not, that's an indication that your listings are appearing in more places across the eBay site, but are not targeted well and/or may be appearing in places less likely to actually be seen and clicked on, like in one of those scrolling ad spots.

As far as organic (promoted) in theory that should be showing the organic performance only for items that you have enrolled in PL campaigns.  So let's say you have 500 listings, but only 100 in PL campaigns - that chart in the ad dashboard is *supposed* to show stats only for the 100, with promoted impressions in green and organic impressions in purple.

That being said, there has been some pretty convincing evidence put forward by others in the past that chart doesn't always follow that rule and, again in the past, has at times shown organic impressions from all listings, not just ones in the PL campaigns.

I haven't looked into it lately, so can't say 100% for sure if it is working as intended or not right now, but in theory that's what organic (promoted) is supposed to mean.

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Summed up very nicely. That brings us to with ALL the neverenending changes/tinkering ebay has made and how everything is supposed to work, how reliable/accurate it is for a seller to use this data going forward. Stated another way...1 set of numbers for the past....A complete other set of numbers going forward. At least with B & M you can actually see the bodies coming through the doors.

I used to almost religiously rely on traffic numbers. Now....Not so much!! Now a sale is just a yay!!

-Lotz

[ducks2k]

@valueaddedresource- you really are "value added".  I had seen those popups but had still not understood them.  Not sure I do even now...   but closer...

Your thoughts on the #73 placement are really critical to the analysis.  Lets say I go to the little search box and type in 'trout stamp' and specify site-wide  (not in quotes).  The response is "2,700+ results for trout stamp", of which 4 are visible.  So, does that bump the organic count by 4 or 2,700?   -- I'm not conflating my listings and all listings, but probably 500-700 of those returns are mine.  None of those first 4 are mine, but down around number 14, mine start appearing.  So, when I scroll down to start counting them, is that when my organic count starts increasing?   When the first one scolls off the page and then I scroll back, does that bump the counter?  If is hit the browser reload and it repeats the search, are those new impressions?  Inquiring minds want to know.  

I need to do some dead-of-night trials - my stuff is obscure enough that I may be the only one seeing my listings at 2 am.  I've noticed that the advertising stats page is pretty responsive - for all I know, the continually changing counts might be from hours ago, but they do change a lot.

Generating the downloadable report takes over a minute to generate for my 5,000 items, but in dead-of-night this might be able to get me precise(ish) counts on individual item views.

My sales are irregular, but frequent enough that promotion results might be visible.  In the last month (my entire campaign), promotion claims 67 of my 250 items sold, but I can attribute 40+ of them to one buyer who was just using the promotion blocks to click on rather than going back to his search.

This is not a cost thing - promotion fees are $11.47 on about $2,500 of total sales.  I just want to understand the principles involved.

[allthingssurplus]

I've been on this site for close to 23 years.  I see why you have sales everyday and do not need to do PL.  You are selling in a niche with high quality items with limited competition.  Someone selling a wide array of computer parts (me), someone selling auto parts,  clothing or commodity items is not so lucky.  We fall in a margin sensitive and at times too much product available market.  I fought PL for a long time.  We were forced over to the new listing experience 8 days ago.  I think that was the key that stopped our sales.  My searches have been down and sales volume down by 60% since the first part of the year due to the launching of PL (for real).  Normal eBay business for us is like $2k a day, since early May down to $1k and after we were put into the new experience $100-200 a day.  Why I know the decline in sales is the new platform is yesterday we raised all of our 4000 listing by 5% and  promoted all 4000 by 2%.  All of the changes happened within in minutes unlike adding of deleting inventory which can take up to 24-48 hours.  Result of the changes we sold just under $700 that day.  eBay has clearly taken the free enterprise system out of selling.  No more organic selling.  No more he who has the best product and price wins.  Its now all about paying graft in order to sell your product.  

By the way you should look at some of David Bennet's bronze and glass items.  They are amazing and fit in your niche.

[valueaddedresource]

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@ducks2k wrote:

@valueaddedresource- you really are "value added".  I had seen those popups but had still not understood them.  Not sure I do even now...   but closer...

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Thanks @ducks2k ! I do my best to live up to the name. 😉

Just to be clear, when I referenced #73 placement for an ad, I was talking about on the listing page, not the search results page.

The full picture is too large to display properly here in the community, but here's just an excerpt - on this one listing page I counted 116 competing ads on the page, including all the ones in the scrolling ad modules.

So for example the one I have highlighted with the green border, that module had an arrow that allows you to scroll to the right to see even more ads. That theoretical #73 spot would be there, where the buyer would have to scroll to see it, but technically it "appears on an eBay site" so I believe it would be counted as an impression, even if the buyer didn't scroll to physically view it....hope that makes sense.

Your questions about search do bring up a good point as well - does it count as an impression if your listing is displayed as a search result (whether organic or promoted) even if it is on page 5 and the buyer never gets that far in actual viewing?

Honestly, I can't say with 100% certainty. However, the wording of eBay's definition would suggest possibly yes.

If impressions literally are just the number of times your listing appears on any eBay site, that's a pretty broad definition and could potentially mean any time it is served as a search result, regardless of whether the buyer ever actually sees the listing or not.

I wish I could give you something more concrete than that, but that's just my informed opinion based on taking exactly what eBay has said about impressions at face value.

I think that interpretation of it may also help explain at least one reason why so many sellers see increases in impressions that don't equate to additional clicks or sales. As sellers, we tend to think of impressions as a potential buyer actually physically "seeing" our listings, but that may not always be the case.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource You say: "

As far as organic (promoted) in theory that should be showing the organic performance only for items that you have enrolled in PL campaigns.  So let's say you have 500 listings, but only 100 in PL campaigns - that chart in the ad dashboard is *supposed* to show stats only for the 100, with promoted impressions in green and organic impressions in purple.

That being said, there has been some pretty convincing evidence put forward by others in the past that chart doesn't always follow that rule and, again in the past, has at times shown organic impressions from all listings, not just ones in the PL campaigns.

I haven't looked into it lately, so can't say 100% for sure if it is working as intended or not right now, but in theory that's what organic (promoted) is supposed to mean."

I'm the one who spent months harping on the fact that ebay was defining organic on this graph as confined to listings that were part of the PL campaign, but was, in fact, INCORRECTLY showing the total of ALL organic listings, whether they were part of the PL campaign or not. I demonstrated this CONCLUSIVELY in a post to Griff in his Podcast Board, but his answer was basically to check with the Team and the Team reported back by basically just repeating the definition....while ignoring the fact that the graph I included clearly DID NOT meet the definition, but was instead showing ALL organic listings, whether a part of the PL campaign or not.

As far as I know, ebay NEVER actually admitted they had been showing the wrong data, but some time after that, they quietly began showing the correct data. So, as far as I know (I haven't tested this lately), organic listings on that graph now CORRECTLY show ONLY the number of time listings from the PL campaign are shown as organic (ie, not as sponsored). 

While I would have preferred an announcement from ebay acknowledging their error and confirming the correction, I'm satisfied that ebay eventually did correct their mistake...I really was getting tired of beating my head against that particular wall LOL

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource " As sellers, we tend to think of impressions as a potential buyer actually physically "seeing" our listings, but that may not always be the case."

Honestly, I've never thought that. I've always thought it simply means ebay displayed a page which had my item on it. An "impression" does not mean he took notice of my item. If I walk into a room and walk right out, I might be able to tell you there was a fireplace at the far end of the room, but probably couldn't tell you much of anything about what was on the mantle, or what pictures hung on the wall.

 This is similar: It basically means the buyer had the opportunity (perhaps with additional scrolling, perhaps not) to see my item. It does not mean he really "saw" it, in the sense that it actually registered. 

Before PLS, I think ebay showed only search page impressions, so that you could make a very rough assumption that if your item got a bunch of impressions, buyers were at least searching for your item or one similar to it. So, the impression to view ratio was a somewhat useful statistic. Impression indicated a buyer at least had some level of interest in an item at least somewhat like mine. But we know that with PLS on listing pages, for example, ebay sometimes deliberately shows items that aren't even related to the listing viewed.

So the impression count, especially the PL impression count/view ratio, is diluted as a useful statistic.

This is one reason I've been asking ebay to provide data on where the buyer came from when he bought with a PL. Search page? A View item page? An ended item page? Or some other PL location? That at least would give me some insight: Is PL most useful to me because it drives buyers to buy because of my search page placement? Or is it because PLS appears on other non search results pages?

I sell single quantity long tail items. Someone selling multi quantity, in demand items, might find some data more useful. But for me, PL impressions and views aren't all that informative. They are useful to help me gauge how one campaign performs against another , but if ebay did away with them entirely, I'm not sure it would make much difference to my business.

[katzrul15]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@valueaddedresource " As sellers, we tend to think of impressions as a potential buyer actually physically "seeing" our listings, but that may not always be the case."

Honestly, I've never thought that. I've always thought it simply means ebay displayed a page which had my item on it. An "impression" does not mean he took notice of my item. If I walk into a room and walk right out, I might be able to tell you there was a fireplace at the far end of the room, but probably couldn't tell you much of anything about what was on the mantle, or what pictures hung on the wall.

 This is similar: It basically means the buyer had the opportunity (perhaps with additional scrolling, perhaps not) to see my item. It does not mean he really "saw" it, in the sense that it actually registered. 

Before PLS, I think ebay showed only search page impressions, so that you could make a very rough assumption that if your item got a bunch of impressions, buyers were at least searching for your item or one similar to it. So, the impression to view ratio was a somewhat useful statistic. Impression indicated a buyer at least had some level of interest in an item at least somewhat like mine. But we know that with PLS on listing pages, for example, ebay sometimes deliberately shows items that aren't even related to the listing viewed.

So the impression count, especially the PL impression count/view ratio, is diluted as a useful statistic.

This is one reason I've been asking ebay to provide data on where the buyer came from when he bought with a PL. Search page? A View item page? An ended item page? Or some other PL location? That at least would give me some insight: Is PL most useful to me because it drives buyers to buy because of my search page placement? Or is it because PLS appears on other non search results pages?

I sell single quantity long tail items. Someone selling multi quantity, in demand items, might find some data more useful. But for me, PL impressions and views aren't all that informative. They are useful to help me gauge how one campaign performs against another , but if ebay did away with them entirely, I'm not sure it would make much difference to my business.

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@valueaddedresource 

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques 

Would love this data also.  Every sale, e-Bay "says" the PL applied.  Have no way to know.  Would love to better understand origin of Buyer -knowledge is power.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@katzrul15 Well, of course, we just have to take ebay's word for it that the sale tracks back to the PL listing, not an organic one. But I think it would be really helpful to know whether those sales are  because of my PLS placement on the search results page, or are they because of a specific non-search results page?

[valueaddedresource]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@valueaddedresource " As sellers, we tend to think of impressions as a potential buyer actually physically "seeing" our listings, but that may not always be the case."

Honestly, I've never thought that. I've always thought it simply means ebay displayed a page which had my item on it. An "impression" does not mean he took notice of my item. If I walk into a room and walk right out, I might be able to tell you there was a fireplace at the far end of the room, but probably couldn't tell you much of anything about what was on the mantle, or what pictures hung on the wall.

 This is similar: It basically means the buyer had the opportunity (perhaps with additional scrolling, perhaps not) to see my item. It does not mean he really "saw" it, in the sense that it actually registered. 

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques  right, I'm not talking about whether or not the buyer actually "registered" it, as we all know people can just scroll past and not really take notice of things right in front of their faces.

My point was I think most sellers tend to think that with impressions, at least the item was actually placed in front of someone's face (whether it was registered or not) and that may not necessarily always be the case.

To expand on your example - walking into a room and not noticing a picture hanging on the wall is different than walking into a room and not seeing the glass bowl that is inside the cupboard. Sure, it's possible you could have opened the cupboard to see it, but odds that you would do that are significantly lower than odds that you would notice the picture on the wall.

Just from a user perspective, I think most people can understand that a picture hanging on a wall out in the open and a bowl inside a cabinet don't exactly represent the same thing as far as potential visibility to someone who walks in the room.

But eBay's definition of impressions would seem to treat the picture and the bowl exactly the same because they're in the same room. Regardless of whether you think that's right or wrong, I think it's important to understand it and how that may lead to impressions increasing but not leading to more clicks or sales.

We don't know to what extent click through rates factor into eBay's algorithms at any given time, but many long time sellers believe it is at least one factor eBay looks it, which makes sense - higher click through rates (CTR) would seem to indicate buyers are interested in your item, lower ones might indicate your item is not attractive to them.

CTR is defined as:

The number of page views to your listings from eBay during this time period divided by the number of impressions. This excludes external page views.

For example, if your listing gets 1,000 impressions and 5 page views from eBay, your click-through rate is 0.5%.

So just as a matter of basic math, if your impressions increase, but page views don't, that is going to lower your CTR.

What impact that may have long term, whether organic is separate from PL, etc. is a whole other topic and honestly probably changes constantly as we all know that eBay tweaks the algorithms and may even have different ones running in different categories at any given time.

Not saying this definition of impressions is bad, good, right or wrong - just saying it's something I think all sellers should be aware of to understand what those numbers in the reports and charts really represent and how it may impact their performance.

[mybigsale]

@katzrul15 

I think you found the eBay sweet spot.  With final value fees and sponsored ads amounting to an approximate 25% take of the total paid ($Item + $Shipping + $State Tax) the eBay plan is working. Somebody at eBay is getting a bonus. Keep pushing. 🙄

Why am I paying eBay 25 cents on the dollar for the tax my buyer paid (when 25% total fees)? Oh yeah, eBay is spending 25 cents on the dollar to file the state tax. Get those accountants some new crayons.

[katzrul15]

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@mybigsale wrote:

@katzrul15 

I think you found the eBay sweet spot.  With final value fees and sponsored ads amounting to an approximate 25% take of the total paid ($Item + $Shipping + $State Tax) the eBay plan is working. Somebody at eBay is getting a bonus. Keep pushing. 🙄

Why am I paying eBay 25 cents on the dollar for the tax my buyer paid (when 25% total fees)? Oh yeah, eBay is spending 25 cents on the dollar to file the state tax. Get those accountants some new crayons.

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@mybigsale 

Agreed!!!

[valueaddedresource]

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques to make the comparison simpler, I think we can all agree that in this example, a listing in ad spot #77 (requiring the buyer to scroll or swipe right) does not have exactly the same opportunity to be seen as the listing in ad spot #70.

Yes both do have an opportunity to be seen, but the additional action required makes the odds of them being seen not equal.

However, for the purposes of the impressions statistics, I believe eBay does in fact count both of those as an impression.

A lot of sellers may think that doesn't really matter, since they're only paying an ad fee if the buyer clicks through and actually buys - so less visibility, no click, no sale, no fee - not a big deal.

However, given that it may impact CTR, which in turn may affect organic placement in the long run, there could possibly be long term impact that could have a "cost" beyond just whether or not you end up paying ad fees on any given sale.