Lowering investment in PL now has a negative effect on your *organic* impressions!

[zamo-zuan]

Just want to give a warning for other sellers out this. I would assume this is a glitch (as it's against the very definition of organic impressions), PL rates seem to now be linked to organic impressions!

We normally invest up to 4% in our promotions. Due to some of the issues others were reporting, we attempted lowering our rates to 2% (you could see the exact date that happened - Sep 23rd).

The worrying part is that you could see not only were the PL impressions reduced, but the organic impressions were reduced as well! 

We put our rates back up to 4% on Sep 28th. Not only did we restore them to the level we were at earlier, we added even more items to our promotions than usual. Despite this, you could see we permanently lost some momentum, and have permanently lost ~50k promoted and ~50k organic impressions per day!

Again, I can only assume this is some type of glitch, as organic should never be altered by promotions.

This also brings to light a very scary situation, as we regret touching our PL rates at all. If we're investing more now, we should have results for it. But we have seen a drop, despite investing more, because we lowered them just for a few days. You can see that simply changing for a few days ended up hurting our store and we haven't found a way to regain the impressions that were lost. Simply put, you may be in danger if you touch your PL campaigns at all. Even if you decide to invest more, you may see a drop.

I wish I had something good to say about these changes, but the last month has been nothing but more bugs and glitches. It's reminiscent of 2018-2019. It seems as if they're making the same mistakes they made back then, and it's bringing back the same bugs and glitches, and hurting sellers visibility, same as it did back then.

[coastaltechsolution]

Search this forum, you will find many discussions about this 

[b86fiero]

I have been seeing the exact same impressions nosedive as you for a couple of months.

Lower or end a PL and organic impressions hit the bottom and stay there until another PL campaign is launched.

My organic impressions used to register over 100,000, then dropped to around 80,000, now I'm lucky to see numbers in the mid 40,000 - and that's only if I run a PL with a high percentage point.

[frugality_inc]

Does it surprise anyone every single program and updates eBay has rolled out continues to be filled with glitches?

Broken systems on top of broken systems. 

eBay is too busy counting the money they make off of PLs to bother fixing this problem. Don't expect it to be fixed. eBay will just tell you to pay more.

[zamo-zuan]

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@frugality_inc wrote:

Does it surprise anyone every single program and updates eBay has rolled out continues to be filled with glitches?

Broken systems on top of broken systems. 

eBay is too busy counting the money they make off of PLs to bother fixing this problem. Don't expect it to be fixed. eBay will just tell you to pay more.

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Yep, but this is a pretty bad one, as there's no case that organic impressions should suffer due to promotions. And I have the screenshots from the past to confirm this wasn't always the case. 

[katzrul15]

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@zamo-zuan wrote:

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@frugality_inc wrote:

Does it surprise anyone every single program and updates eBay has rolled out continues to be filled with glitches?

Broken systems on top of broken systems. 

eBay is too busy counting the money they make off of PLs to bother fixing this problem. Don't expect it to be fixed. eBay will just tell you to pay more.

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Yep, but this is a pretty bad one, as there's no case that organic impressions should suffer due to promotions. And I have the screenshots from the past to confirm this wasn't always the case. 

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Unfortunately this really is bad.  Just as I suspected it would be.  

[zamo-zuan]

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@coastaltechsolution wrote:

Search this forum, you will find many discussions about this 

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I haven't seen any specifically mentioning organic impressions dropping because of tweaking promoted listing rates. 

And for an extended comparison, here's a better view:

Of course, at this point we regret testing changes to promoted rates at all. I had hoped to discover if there was any changes to the system and to see if there was any way I could help others get their promoted impressions back. Now we've lost impressions and we're in the same boat, for simply attempting different rates.

But it's not right that even if you temporarily lower them, you won't go back to where you were even if you raise them beyond where they were in the first place.

That's besides the point that organic impressions should NOT be harmed at all by any changes of the promotional rates!

[frugality_inc]

I've given this some thought and looked at traffic patterns going back to 2019. I honestly think this is done all by design at this point and isn't a glitch.

eBay wants you dependent on promoted listings and punishes you if you decide to lower your ad rate.

[zamo-zuan]

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@frugality_inc wrote:

I've given this some thought and looked at traffic patterns going back to 2019. I honestly think this is done all by design at this point and isn't a glitch.

eBay wants you dependent on promoted listings and punishes you if you decide to lower your ad rate.

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We have tested promotional rates since they started, and never have the organic impressions been altered by the promotional rates. I have screenshots of this I can share when I'm at my other computer).

Although the last sentence is completely true. As of last year, I posted about them doing that when they called it a "test". But only promotional impressions were hurt, not organic.

This is one of the more severe problems I've found on eBay as it goes against the very definition of what an organic impression is. Organic is defined as reach that is NOT paid for. But now even the non-paid reach is requiring payment?