Is there a connection between eBays Spring cleaning and the removal of Sponsored ads within listings

[timemachine777]

What's your take? I find it very interesting and timely that while eBay decides to purge all the sponsored ad links within all the listings that they made affiliate fees from, They launch the Spring cleaning campaign to rid the site of all the older listings that they no longer need for all of those sponsored ads that were removed.

In the two decades that eBay has been around, they could care less about how old a sellers active listing were as they pushed the GTC (Good Till Canceled) option. Now they do claim that the ads were removed so that they could make room for their new fee based highest bidder search placement promoted listing program. 

I can see that they can't have both the promoted listings and the 3rd party sponsored ads, and all the other ads in the sellers product listings. The product being offered for sale would be lost among the already eBay cluttered listing.

The big difference between the these two products is that it benefited eBay to have as many active listings on the site as possible to load them up with the sponsored ads, because at the least, eBay got a click fee from the sponsors, and the chance to make a very high commission if a buyer portal jumps to the sponsors site through the ad an buys something there. 

Those listings were all used as portal bait for affiliate fees that eBay would get. However the Promoted ads do not work the same way as eBay only makes money if the your item sells within the 30 days the item was clicked on by the buyer. (But there's no way for a seller to really know if their item was bought from a promoted listing placement or a reg search placement, or better yet, a buyer rummaging through their active inventory. Which is another issue altogether). 

So eBay would no longer benefit from a site loaded with whatever someone wants to list for sale. It would actually benefit eBay to have a more slimmed down site with quicker selling items, as it would reduce eBay's storage, server, and bandwidth costs. So in the end it's less about the sellers profits and more about eBay's profits as par course.

[cell.buyer]

No connection, the executive team is lost, sellers are mad about the ads when they started them, they are closing their stores due to eBay removing listings they worked hard to put up and paid big money in subscription fees to list.

One thing eBay executives are good at is making policies that upset their customer base, they are batting 1,000 in this regard.

Did you get the email yesterday where eBay wants sellers to pay them 295 bucks to attend a brainwashing workshop at their open show, what a joke ???

[dhbookds]

(But there's no way for a seller to really know if their item was bought from a promoted listing placement or a reg search placement, or better yet, a buyer rummaging through their active inventory. Which is another issue altogether)

Actually, I believe you are wrong about that.......or at least sellers have said they've sold from regular listings and NOT paid the commission even tho they have the same promoted listings up........

Prior to sponspored ads (outside sponsors), there were different ebay programs to pay extra for better placement......so this type of thing is nothing new..........

[timemachine777]

I get that sellers never liked those sponsored ads in the first place and that sellers are closing or downgrading their stores due to the Spring cleaning listing removals going on. But I was looking at the correlation between the the two events. 

[copper.boom]

I think you're reading too much into it. There are several things occuring all at once including the ban on active content, changes in fees, and more.

Everything is connected in terms of attempts at making the site more searchable, more mobile friendly, etc, and some of the fee changes are probably related to the 3rd party sponsored ads going away, but I disagree that eBay wants fewer listings because of 3rd party sponsored ads going away.

While there are exceptions (such as duplicates), a lot of what's being removed are "stale" listings with little to no activity. Those long-tail items don't often generate much in the way of traffic because they need the right buyer, so the 3rd party click revenue generated from those listings was probably quite minimal.

[cell.buyer]

I gave you the correlation, eBay executives are misguided and have been since Donahoe came on, Devin has not reversed Donahoe's policies, he has extended them and sellers are simply noise that they pay no attention to.

[timemachine777]

---

@dhbookds wrote:

(But there's no way for a seller to really know if their item was bought from a promoted listing placement or a reg search placement, or better yet, a buyer rummaging through their active inventory. Which is another issue altogether)

Actually, I believe you are wrong about that.......or at least sellers have said they've sold from regular listings and NOT paid the commission even tho they have the same promoted listings up........

Prior to sponspored ads (outside sponsors), there were different ebay programs to pay extra for better placement......so this type of thing is nothing new..........

---

Even though I inserted that statement, I didn't want to elaborate on it yet. It could use it's own thread. With that said...Currently there is no way for the seller to really know how they got the sale. I had the same problem with Paypal when eBay purchased them. 

Prior to eBay purchasing Paypal, they had a policy that if someone purchased your item with funds from their Paypal account, you would not be charge a transaction fee. Only if they used their credit card would you pay a fee. That became a muddy issue once eBay took over. All of a sudden all the transactions were getting hit with a fee, so I started to ask my customers if they were paying via existing funds or Credit cards on Paypal. 

I found that over half were using existing funds. When I contacted Paypal about the fees. They claimed that the payments were made using CC's. There was no way to see how the payments were being made, and I couldn't push the customer to call paypal and argue the issue over a couple of dollars in fees, and Paypal would not let you openly charge the buyer a fee for a CC transaction. That buck or two by itself was not a lot of money, but it added up to well over 600.00 a month in added fees for me. 

This is the same thing in the sense that the seller has no clue how the transaction took place unless they ask the buyer. So it is possible that sellers could be charge an added fee for every listing that they promote when it sells, regardless of how it was accessed by the buyer.

[dhbookds]

Sure it's possible.........almost anything is......  However, the previous programs ebay had, weren't for 2 listings.........so no question you paid the fee if someone bought......  Frankly, I'll never understand why they went with showing both listings.......but as I said........ sellers are NOT being charged the fee if something sells from the non promoted listing........

You can argue all day as to whether the charges are correct or not........as I'm sure you will.........

[timemachine777]

---

@copper.boom wrote:

I think you're reading too much into it. There are several things occuring all at once including the ban on active content, changes in fees, and more.

Everything is connected in terms of attempts at making the site more searchable, more mobile friendly, etc, and some of the fee changes are probably related to the 3rd party sponsored ads going away, but I disagree that eBay wants fewer listings because of 3rd party sponsored ads going away.

While there are exceptions (such as duplicates), a lot of what's being removed are "stale" listings with little to no activity. Those long-tail items don't often generate much in the way of traffic because they need the right buyer, so the 3rd party click revenue generated from those listings was probably quite minimal.

---

Sponsored ads don't affect the listings for being mobile friendly, only active content and heavy HTML has some impact. Plus eBay already states that, that change is to help with the visibility of promoted listings and their sell trough rate.  Also for the past two decades, eBay could care less about stale listings. Those stale listings are not suppose to come up in search anyway, unless someone searches for them.

As for the serchability of the site. That's an algorithm issue with eBay. eBay's algorithm recipe is a recipe for disaster for many sellers. If a seller doesn't do exactly as eBay wants them to do in terms of best practices and their selling policies, the listing is slated to be hidden in the search results of the searcher regardless of their query.

[cell.buyer]

eBay knows this policy is misguided and that sellers are closing their stores and reducing the levels of their store subscriptions, but since the automated program has been unleashed they have no clue on how to respond, in fact eBay employees on this forum have quit responding to the listing removal threads because they have no clue on how to correct their massive error at this point and are waiting for some direction from the misguided executives that started the policy in the first place.

[timemachine777]

---

@dhbookds wrote:

Sure it's possible.........almost anything is......  However, the previous programs ebay had, weren't for 2 listings.........so no question you paid the fee if someone bought......  Frankly, I'll never understand why they went with showing both listings.......but as I said........ sellers are NOT being charged the fee if something sells from the non promoted listing........

You can argue all day as to whether the charges are correct or not........as I'm sure you will.........

---

No, because I will not be using promoted listings. The sellers that do use it will eventually make that argument as time goes on, and they begin paying fees. If they find that they are always paying an added fee for those type of listings, they will begin to question the process. I just brought the thought of "What If" to the boards.

[timemachine777]

---

@cell.buyer wrote:

eBay knows this policy is misguided and that sellers are closing their stores and reducing the levels of their store subscriptions, but since the automated program has been unleashed they have no clue on how to respond, in fact eBay employees on this forum have quit responding to the listing removal threads because they have no clue on how to correct their massive error at this point and are waiting for some direction from the misguided executives that started the policy in the first place.

---

I also noticed that sellers questions on that matter have gone unanswered by the pop in comments made by the eBay reps here.

[copper.boom]

---

@timemachine777 wrote:

---

Sponsored ads don't affect the listings for being mobile friendly, only active content and heavy HTML has some impact. 

---

Yes, that was my point. A lot of changes are happening all at the same time, but that does not mean there is a connection between them. Just because sponsored ads & spring cleaning are occuring at the same time does not mean that one is the result of the other.

[timemachine777]

One would have been a disaster for the other before, whereas now one benefits the other. That's the connection I was looking at.

[copper.boom]

---

@timemachine777 wrote:

One would have been a disaster for the other before, whereas now one benefits the other. That's the connection I was looking at.

---

I really don't think it would have been a disaster before, nor do I think one is the reason for the other now. As I said above, while there are exceptions (such as duplicates), a lot of what's being removed are "stale" listings with little to no activity. Those long-tail items don't often generate much in the way of traffic because they need the right buyer, so the 3rd party click revenue generated from those listings was probably quite minimal.

I just don't think it's as big of an impact as you do.