eBay

retromaxgaming · ‎07-19-2022

While the mid summer slump is no doubt in effect, and the economy turning in a direction hindering sales; There seems to be another issue at play. Ive experienced a drop off in impressions and clicks since 7/10. You can certainly expect some fluctuations, but this seems different. My impressions and clicks have dropped over 90%. I spoke with CS and There are no restrictions or issues that would hinder my ability to get clicks or impressions. They stated that there are no technical issues going on right now, and my metrics are all up. This is a normal flow they said. They also said it should get better in the next 2 days. What needs to get better if there is no issues going on? I found that to be an odd response from them. It could very well just been a way to push the call to a close. I use ads at 5%, I tried bumping that up to 10% just to see what would happen. They continued to decline. I ended and submitted all listings as new listings and started a new 5% campaign. They continued to decline. Im sure others have had similar experiences with sale drop offs. Thats to be expected this time of year and with everything going on. Im specifically looking to see if anyone has experienced a similar drop off in Promoted / organic impressions and clicks. Did you find a work around. Thanks!

skeletonstore · ‎07-19-2022

Maybe get a white backdrop and set your camera phone to square pictures. I was using one of those dry eraser boards when I was selling small items. Impressions don't impress me, organic clicks are the only thing that counts. It could also be it's summer and the market has dried up for now as people are more interested in spending time outside.

laststopgeneralstore · ‎07-19-2022

Could you show us a photo of your traffic tab? I'm curious to see a 90% drop off. Are you comparing to the last 90-180 days or Year? or to the last week(s) or month(s). I've had a small decrease in my impressions but nothing out of the ordinary. My impressions are virtually the same everyday and my views will fluctuate. I've made some tweaks and am liquidating old inventory but what has helped me the most is buying better items that sell quicker for more money & I'm in an extremely saturated category.

retromaxgaming · ‎07-19-2022

The steep decline June 30 is from a campaign ending. I started a new campaign July 1 in the mid afternoon, It jumped right back up. July 10 you will see a continual drop to near nothing.

retromaxgaming · ‎07-19-2022

retromaxgaming · ‎07-19-2022

Spoke with support again for over an hour. First agent I spoke with confirmed what I am seeing with the decline. They agreed that something has to be going on for the promoted impressions to drop out like that on an active campaign. They also said there is an open ticket on promoted listings, but it was for issues with creating promoted listings. They transferred me to the business development team where I spoke with someone who told me to add same day handling, 30 day returns, and free shipping to help my sales.. They complete changed the reason for the call. I already offer all those anyway. They then told me if I have all that done there is nothing else to do but wait for a bounce back. They told me the number one reason for low impressions is low views on the items...... Impressions are views, they just wanted me off the phone. I escalated the call to their management team where they also tried to make the issue about decreased sales a few times during our conversation. I kept having to repeat the call was about promoted impressions. That didn't stop them from going one about reasons for low sales. They went as far as saying that it could be that video games and toys are not a high performing category. They finally said they would open a ticket with the back office team to look at the issue. I will get no updates or notifications about their findings. - Hour well spent...

blurryrobot · ‎07-19-2022

It isn't categories or backgrounds or anything. There is clearly a problem with Promoted Listings that started on July 10 when they did an update. Because I am seeing exactly the same daily decline in promoted impressions since that date. And I KNOW they did an update on July 10, because that was the day they made 2% the minimum (none of mine were lower than 2%, so it isn't that causing this problem)

Look, the exact same thing here:

blurryrobot · ‎07-19-2022

Notice that it is ONLY your promoted impressions that have dropped precipitously post 7/10. If it was any of the other reasons Ebay and other users have been throwing out there, your organic listings would show the same trend but they don't. It's a problem with Promoted Listings plain and simple, and no doubt related to the new code Ebay rolled out after 7/10. And Ebay's people surely know this update was done, if I know about it from the email they sent to us sellers. They don't want to admit that their own meddling has broken things. Again.

retromaxgaming · ‎07-19-2022

Yes this is what I've concluded as well. People love to jump to listing qualities like photo backgrounds for reasoning. What they do not realize is what works well for some categories does not with others. In the vintage and collectible categories I've found overly stock looking photos to actually hinder click through rates. Buyers in these categories are collectors and want to see actual photos above all else. Having a stock looking photo may cause the item to be passed by. I used to use a large photo light box for my photos. I got so many requests for photos of the actual item even though they where that I eventually just sold it. Thanks for your feedback and replies. I hope they get it fixed soon. Promoted sales helped me have a better June this year than I did last November or December. I had high hopes.

niji-10 · ‎07-27-2022

Has this issue gotten better for anybody else? I also had a sharp promoted impressions decline around the same time and am still in a slump. At this point, I guess all we can do is wait it out...?

paraquip · ‎07-27-2022

As of 7/27 10:12 PM EST my average sales are down over 80% when I compare June to July...... Impressions / Views are down massively......since we are not at the end of the month....the metrics keep on shifting on the already massively downward performance......... so my impressions were down 50% since June but now that July stats are alomst all in.....they are down another 38% on top of that

HK

blurryrobot · ‎08-29-2022

So, has anybody figured out what went on with Promoted Listings from around July 10 til August 5?
Because there is no way this pattern is organic. The fact that sales are somewhat mediocre compared with last August, might absolutely be due to the economy, but that pronounced dip is profoundly inorganic in appearance.

Something broke, or was changed, then was repaired, or put back to how it was before. But what?

And it absolutely did affect sales!

The asymmetry of the pattern is somewhat interesting to me as a former technician. If that impressions chart was a graph of a machine's speed, I would say that the machine was switched off on "July 10" and coasted down, then was suddenly switched on at normal power, no deliberate ramp up, on July 30.

Did anybody else see a pattern like this in their promoted listing impresions? Post 'em if ya got 'em...

rugerskick · ‎08-29-2022

Man I'd love to have as many impressions (translating over to sales) as you do. Just your level of organic impressions would be awesome. I get roughly 2.5-5% as much as your organic impressions.

rugerskick · ‎08-29-2022

So, like all the current problems, it goes back to the algorithm working poorly. All their updates to it have made searches worse which affects impressions and views, and sales. Now they did something to affect promoted listings which has made that work worse, which affects listings, views, and therefore, sales.

They claim to be adding improvements. Every stat we can see shows otherwise. Google search works better than the ebay search at finding relevant items.

They are tanking the system while telling sellers its being made better for us. And we are paying them for this increasingly degraded platform.

zamo-zuan · ‎08-29-2022

@blurryrobot wrote:
So, has anybody figured out what went on with Promoted Listings from around July 10 til August 5?
Because there is no way this pattern is organic. The fact that sales are somewhat mediocre compared with last August, might absolutely be due to the economy, but that pronounced dip is profoundly inorganic in appearance.

Something broke, or was changed, then was repaired, or put back to how it was before. But what?

And it absolutely did affect sales!

The asymmetry of the pattern is somewhat interesting to me as a former technician. If that impressions chart was a graph of a machine's speed, I would say that the machine was switched off on "July 10" and coasted down, then was suddenly switched on at normal power, no deliberate ramp up, on July 30.

Did anybody else see a pattern like this in their promoted listing impresions? Post 'em if ya got 'em...

Many people had similar issues. Don't believe the people who say everything is normal or it's just the economy. The sad truth is eBay constantly breaks things when they update, stays silent and/or deflects the blame. Eventually things do get fixed... But some honesty/transparency would be nice and go a long way with regaining trust.

Although they're probably scared of being honest/transparent because that would mean they would be at risk for recouping the losses they've caused and the damage they've done.