I posted a bit of this on the other thread about attribution changes for UK, Australia, France, Italy, and Spain but digging into more I think it deserves its own thread.
Several sellers are noticing subtle changes in wording on help pages and PL General ad campaign setup pages that suggest the new attribution is coming to the US soon - if not here already.
In November 2024, the General campaign setup page said: "An ad rate is the percentage of your item's total sale amount that is charged when a buyer clicks your general ad and purchases any of your promoted listings with 30 days."
Today, June 11, 2025, that same section says: "The ad rate is the percentage of an item’s total sale amount (including item price, shipping, taxes, and any other applicable fees) that is charged when the promoted item sells within 30 days of a click on your ad."
It also looks like they changed this page in Seller Center to say you'll pay ad fees when "your item sells after a click on your ad" vs "when your item sells through a click on your ad."
The change happened sometime between Feb 21 - March 4, which would be in line with when the new attribution model rolled out in Germany, but this is on the main US . com site.
https://www.ebay.com/sellercenter/growth/ebay-advertising/promoted-listings
There are also similar changes on this help page from around the same time:
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/listing-tips/promoted-listings?id=4164#section2
At the very least I would say the fact they changed the wording on the US site indicates they do plan to expand the new attribution model here eventually, but some sellers are concerned it may already be here, possibly in a stealth and/or phased rollout - and they're also understandably wondering if last week's back charging of months old ads could be related.
Is anyone seeing any other changes either in help/policy pages or a sudden significant increase in sales being attributed to ads with no other changes made that might indicate these changes are applying for US sellers too?
devon@ebay kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay - since these updates make it obvious that the plan is to bring the new attribution model to the US eventually, can you please get a specific timeframe from the ads team of when that will be happening?
@mcdougle4248 wrote:
I am just wondering about all the Social media shares I do. If the listing is in a PL general campaign when I share it from the Social page, and gets a click, then from that point forward it is a sure PL fee when it sells to any buyer.
@mcdougle4248 that's a fair concern and unfortunately kind of a gray area right now.
Another post from the UK boards caught my eye on this because they said that they noticed the share option on item pages now uses a link shortener which creates an eBay.us link (even for UK listings) which when clicked basically redirects to the listing but with tracking attributes added into the URL - and that they were told by support that means those links will "attract the fee" if the item is in a PL campaign.
My first thought was of course we all know how much you can trust what support says - so take it with a large grain of salt.
But I did confirm that links from both the share link on the item page and when using any of the posting options under the Social tab in Seller Hub are in fact using a shortened link now and that when you follow that link, it does direct to a URL that has tracking information added on at the end.
Unfortunately, eBay does not provide explicit documentation for what each and every one of those added parameters in the URL mean - some of them may simply be tracking whether the link was produced by a specific widget, the method of sharing, a marketing campaign ID, whether the item is included in the eBay Partner Network affiliate program etc.
So it's certainly possible some part of that process could designate any clicks on those links as ad attributions, but I just don't have confirmation one way or the other on that yet and haven't been able to find anything official from eBay that would make it explicitly clear.
That being said - on the most recent Marketing Terms update which took effect January 15th, they changed this:
Ads may include text, graphics, a listing title, a listing description or other features and functionality eBay may make available, associate with or incorporate into your listing (e.g., “add to watchlist” icons).
To this:
Ads may include text, graphics, a listing title, a listing description or other features and functionality eBay may make available, associate with or incorporate into your listing (e.g., add to watchlist, add to cart, quick view, or other interactive functionality).
And I think it's safe to assume that "other interactive functionality" could include the Social sharing tools and/or share links on item pages so....like I've said with most of these changes, I think sellers really are just going to have to assume every sale will incur an ad fee if the item is enrolled in PL and set their pricing and offer negotiation strategies accordingly.
