Major Changes To Promoted Listings Ad Attribution In Germany

[valueaddedresource]

Just a heads up - major changes announced for PL Basic/General ad attribution in Germany.

Basically, the update gets rid of distinctions between Direct and Halo attribution, and instead will assess ad fees for any sale where any buyer clicked on the ad - even if that isn't the buyer who ultimately ends up making the purchase!

https://pages.ebay.com/sell/pl/attribution.html 

From February 26, 2025, the following will apply to items listed on eBay.de: eBay will record an attributable sale from a base campaign when a buyer purchases the same item advertised in the ad clicked by any buyer in the last 30 days.

The ad fee is charged when a buyer purchases the item advertised in a basic ad that was clicked by any buyer in the last 30 days. The item must be advertised with an ad both at the time of the click and at the time of the sale. The ad fee is based on the ad rate in effect at the time of the sale.

Interestingly, the update also changes the time frame in which an ad fee might apply.

Previously, if you ended an ad campaign, you could still be charged an ad fee if a sale occurred within 30 days of the last click.

Now it appears that the ad campaign still has to be active for the attribution to count, so ending a campaign stops the possibility of being charged the fee.

To be clear - this change only applies to the eBay.DE site for now but I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't end up expanding at some point later this year, especially with the new Facebook Marketplace partnership.

[valueaddedresource]

FAQs provided by eBay to German sellers:

Why did eBay make this change?

We help sellers get the most out of their eBay experience and continue to invest in tools that help them reach more buyers and grow their business.

This update simplifies reporting for base campaigns while giving sellers control over their base campaign spend. You'll still only pay when your item sells.

Sellers no longer need to differentiate between direct sales and halo item sales in reports, and ad fees are more predictable because clicks on the ad and a subsequent sale of the promoted item are now attributed to promoted offers.

In other words, when a seller's ad receives a click and the item then sells, the ad fee is charged.

Sellers will continue to pay only when their item sells. They always have the option to opt out of the Promoted Listings (Ads) program or use an alternative ad product to reach more buyers and make more sales.

Will updating the allocation increase my base campaign spend?
We expect that sales will increase as a result of ads running a base campaign strategy. Therefore, spend on base campaigns may also increase. We recommend that sellers monitor their ad performance and adjust their strategy accordingly.

Why is this change happening now?
We're announcing this update after the peak holiday and bank holiday season to ensure sellers aren't disrupted or distracted during the busiest time of the year.

This will also hopefully give sellers enough time to observe the impact of this allocation update and adjust their strategies accordingly ahead of other seasonal moments in 2025, such as back-to-school or the holidays.

We're also announcing the rollout 30 days in advance to give sellers time to review the update, ask questions, and help eBay and the community prepare.

How can sellers disable this update?
Sellers who list items on ebay.de and promote them with a basic campaign strategy cannot opt out of this update.

However, you have the option to terminate your participation in the advertising program at any time or to use alternative eBay Advertising products such as ads with a premium campaign strategy, external ads and shop ads.

What is eBay doing to prevent competitors from clicking on ads to trigger the 30-day organic buyer period?

eBay takes spam and fraudulent activity seriously and uses robust technologies and processes to ensure the safety of buyers and sellers.

A seller promotes their products through other channels such as social media and email. Will this updated attribution logic now also take those sales into account (and calculate the ad rate)?

• If a buyer clicks on the advertised listing and the item is sold within 30 days to any buyer, who may be different from the one who clicked on the ad, the seller will be charged the advertised item's advertising rate at the time of sale.
• In the scenario where the buyer purchases the advertised item after clicking on a social media post or email but never clicked on the ad, the seller would still see a sale attributed to the advertised listings and would be charged the purchased item's ad rate at the time of the sale if there was at least one click (from anyone) on the ad for the sold item within the last 30 days.
  
  

What happens to attribution for direct sales and halo item sales for campaigns with a base campaign strategy?

• For items listed on ebay.de and promoted with a basic campaign strategy, direct attribution and halo item attribution will no longer be used for reported sales or when collecting advertising fees.
• However, direct and halo item assignment will also be available in the future for items that are listed outside of ebay.de - for example on ebay.com or ebay.co.uk - and advertised with a basic campaign strategy. Find out more
• Campaigns that use a Premium strategy are not affected by this attribution update.
  
  

Does this put sellers on ebay.de at a competitive disadvantage?

• No. The new attribution logic will be applied to all items listed on ebay.de and promoted with a basic campaign strategy.
• In addition, sellers who list offers on ebay.de now have exclusive access to the first position of their ad in the search results if they promote their offers with a premium strategy.
• These and other improvements to the Premium Campaign strategy are intended to give sellers who use a CPC strategy an advantage in this (ebay.de) highly competitive market.

More info (in German, may need to use Google or some other translation): 

https://community.ebay.de/t5/eBay-Advertising/Anpassungen-bei-eBay-Anzeigen/td-p/4908488 

[valueaddedresource]

That part about social media sharing could prove particularly important as eBay looks to capitalize on their new partnership with Meta that will allow eBay items to be shown on Facebook Marketplace in Germany, France, and the US.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/eBay-to-integrate-with-Facebook-Marketplace/m-p/34871724/highl... 

Many sellers assumed the partnership would be used as a way to push them into using eBay's Offsite Ad cost per click product (and eBay may still go that route as well), but with this new attribution model, at least in Germany they won't need to - once it goes into effect, they'll be able to see immediate additional monetization from many of those Facebook Marketplace clicks if those items are enrolled in Basic/General cost per sale ad campaigns.

[chevymontecarlo88]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

Interestingly, the update also changes the time frame in which an ad fee might apply.

Previously, if you ended an ad campaign, you could still be charged an ad fee if a sale occurred within 30 days of the last click.

Now it appears that the ad campaign still has to be active for the attribution to count, so ending a campaign stops the possibility of being charged the fee.

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I would be a fan of this. Would make it easier for those who end a campaign without the need to end the listing and relisting it (sell similar) to get rid of the promotion attached to it.

The only verbiage that is concerning is the word, "Possibility". 

[valueaddedresource]

@chevymontecarlo88 to be clear, those are my words, not eBay's.

eBay's words were: "The item must be advertised with an ad both at the time of the click and at the time of the sale."

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource  I just started my second cup of coffee...so I probably should wait till I've finished that and have more time to assess this. But, my first impression. And rememder, for those following along at home, at present, this applies only to ebay Germany. 

There are basically two things here. I'll deal with the easier one first.

The Halo Attribution Rule is NOT going away. 

When it was first announced, ebay took great pride in letting us know that our reports would distinguish between direct and halo sales, so that we would have the insights we need to run our ad campaigns.

THAT is what is going away. The reports ebay provides to us will be LESS informative than in the past, because they will no longer distinguish between direct and halo. Of course, ebay will have all that data. ebay will know which sales were the result of a direct sale and which were the result of a halo sale. 

ebay will simply no longer share that data with us. ebay will deliberately and unnecessarily keep us in the dark about our own sales. The data is there. ebay is now REFUSING to disclose it to sellers.

There is simply NO WAY this can be construed as an improvement for sellers. Unfortunately, it is in keeping with the trends set by recent changes to Seller Hub reports. 

This change is deliberately reducing transparency about our sales. It is an insult to all of us as sellers, and will further reduce trust in the platform.  Absolutely shameful.

And, as I noted, Halo attribution is NOT going away. In fact, it will now be "Halo Attribution on Steroids." But that's for another post....

[valueaddedresource]

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques  look at the FAQs I copied and pasted in the second post here -  for Promoted Listings Basic (same as General) cost per sale ads in Germany, it says Direct and Halo attribution will no longer be used for reporting or collecting ad fees.

What happens to attribution for direct sales and halo item sales for campaigns with a base campaign strategy?

• For items listed on ebay.de and promoted with a basic campaign strategy, direct attribution and halo item attribution will no longer be used for reported sales or when collecting advertising fees.
• However, direct and halo item assignment will also be available in the future for items that are listed outside of ebay.de - for example on ebay.com or ebay.co.uk - and advertised with a basic campaign strategy. Find out more
• Campaigns that use a Premium strategy are not affected by this attribution update.

Edit to add the caveat that of course that is what Google translate showed me for the English version - original was in German, so take it with at least a little grain of salt. 😂

[wastingtime101]

Disclaimer: I'm responding without reading any of the above posts.

I saw the change on eBay Germany and somewhere in the fine print it said "halo" attribution reports will still be available if the .de seller's sales are made on .com or .co.uk which, to me, reads like eBay does not plan on making the change to US or UK.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource 

Yes, I read that and do understand that. Which is why I tried to preface my post by saying "this applies only to Germany"

So, to be clear, when I say ebay is taking away this information, I mean on the German site (and yes, for sales made on that site).  

I am not assuming it will be coming here, and I'm also not assuming it will not be coming here. I will be posting about the change to the Halo Rule itself, and , again, to be as clear as I can be, what I will write will apply to ebay Germany. So if I say "sellers" or "we" (as in "we sellers") I am referring to GERMAN SITE sales and sellers. 

I have absolutely no doubt that ebay will be tracking the sales and identifying them INTERNALLY as halo or direct (or perhaps using direct, halo, and Super Halo, who knows?)....but one way or another, ebay will HAVE the data, but ebay will not SHARE it with sellers (German sellers, German site)

Or am I missing your point? I still haven't had that full second cup of coffee....

[valueaddedresource]

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques  My point was just that the "Halo Attribution Rule" is in fact going away for PL Basic/General sales on the .DE site - it's not just that they won't be reporting it any more, they also won't be using it to determine whether the seller is charged an ad fee.

I get where you're coming from but not sure it really makes a difference either way.

Yes, eBay will still have access to data about which items are clicked, when those clicks happen and whether those clicks were promoted or organic. And they'll still be tracking Halo vs Direct in some way since it will apply for sellers based in Germany who sell on the US, UK or other sites and as @wastingtime101 pointed it, it says that info will still be included in reports for sales German sellers make on other sites.

I'm a huge proponent of transparency, but I also believe in order for the display of data to be useful, it has to have context and meaning for the user. In this case, if Direct vs Halo no longer has any bearing or relevance to how eBay determines ad attribution for sales on the .DE site, then I'm not sure what purpose it would serve to continue to provide that specific data in the same format as they did before.

As long as it is still shown for sales where Direct vs Halo actually means something in terms of whether or not the seller is charged a fee, then it's as transparent as it was before in my opinion - which isn't saying much but that's a whole other conversation. 😉

Now if the point is just more generally that eBay should provide all users with much more in depth information about where clicks are coming from so they can have some independent validation rather than the black box "trust me bro" situation we have now - I am all for that, but I see that as a larger overarching issue not necessarily something specific to Direct vs Halo vs whatever we are going to call this thing they are doing in Germany now. 😂

[ittybitnot]

 My point was just that the "Halo Attribution Rule" is in fact going away for PL Basic/General sales on the .DE site -

@valueaddedresource 

What do they call this new one? A ghost, or secret attribution?   If your ad gets a click BY anyone, even if they are looking for general information and not a buyer, and the listing gets purchased BY anyone (even if it not the person who clicked) you are going to get an ad fee. 

I don't guess eBay is going to let the seller know their ad got a click (by someone who just wanted to lift their pictures for their own listing), so they could turn it off? 

Thank you for your report. It is appreciated as always. 

[robbie31415]

So bad....

Changes like these annoy me....

So I blast it at high percentage for short periods, and cancel it, then offer a discount to send them a message, and I shouldn't be charged an ad fee because it's no longer active?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource Gotta disagree.

You say: " it's not just that they won't be reporting it any more, they also won't be using it to determine whether the seller is charged an ad fee."

Sure they will. Ignore what they say, and look at what they will DO.

The ad fee will be charged based on the criteria  ebay has in place for direct and halo sales. They cannot charge a fee without determining whether those criteria have been met or not.

So, now, in Germany, they might refer to them internally as something other than direct or halo, but they will still be using the criteria as defined by direct and halo. And internally, ebay is a data driven company, and you can bet the Ads Team is going to keep track of the impacts of the different criteria. 

So, whatever they call it, and whatever they say, they ARE using the CRITERIA for direct and halo, and they COULD provide us with that data (which, as you note they will continue to do outside of Germany). They are CHOOSING not to share it with us.

SInce the data they do provide us is supposedly to help us make informed decisions about the value of promoted listings, why take this away?

I agree 100%....data needs context, and ebay provides precious little of that. BUT...if I discover that 20% of my ad fees are tied to direct sales (sales that have a fairly clear connection to the ad) and 80% are tied to Halo sales (which, by ebay's own definition, are not required to have ANY REAL connection to the ad), well, that provides me with information I think is pretty important. That tells me that 80% of the ad fees I'm paying are based on the flimsiest connection imaginable to an actual ad campaign.

So, I can understand why ebay would rather not provide this information to us. 

Look, this company is in trouble. They have failed to really grow GMV for years now, as their competition takes more and more of the ecommerce market. In the absence of sales growth, they have relied on ad revenue for whatever revenue growth they've been able to show. And that ad growth is not coming from increased sales velocity or even a huge increase in ad adoption by sellers. It is coming from all these growth "hacks" the Ads Team has been coming up with: 1% minimum to 2%---boom, more ad revenue, without a need to increase sales. Fee calculated on total sales price rather than item price. Boom, more ad revenue without sales growth. Halo Attribution---ebay has even acknowledged that this alone grew ad revenue considerably. Again, no need to increase sales, just broaden the definition of which sales get hit with the ad fee. General Ad Dynamic minimum fee from 2% to 5% without any announcement. Boom...you guessed it...Ever increasing "Suggested" rates, some in excess of the FVF rate. Yep....Boom...And now in Germany we have Halo #2. 

NONE of these changes have really moved the needle on GMV. ALL of them have increased Ad Revenue without the pesky need to increase sales.

2025 is ebay's 30th Anniversary Celebration. I'm betting it will also be the year ebay adds sponsored listings to our store pages. The Halo Rules have already come for our store listings which are shown organically so should not be hit with an ad fee, but with the Halo rule (or rules, in Germany), more sales made directly from our stores, or from a social media page, will be hit with an ad fee. 

The inability to grow GMV at any real pace has made ebay dependent on ads, and ebay has to keep finding more and more ways to extract ad revenue from its base.  

So, yes, ebay has plenty of data on direct and halo...and plenty of reason to NOT want to share it with us.

The Germans will be shown data that lumps direct and halo together, so that sellers will have no idea just how many of those sales are the result of a changed definition, rather than the result of an actual connection to an ad. 

[cardxcraft]

Here's another change I noticed about a month ago on eBay.com.  Previously, If a seller was using PL campaign a buyer could go directly to the store search and by-pass the pl.  Now, if a buyer searches through a store with a pl campaign, all listing being promoted show up as promoted within the store; even newly created, direct links.

[valueaddedresource]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@valueaddedresource Gotta disagree.

You say: " it's not just that they won't be reporting it any more, they also won't be using it to determine whether the seller is charged an ad fee."

Sure they will. Ignore what they say, and look at what they will DO.

The ad fee will be charged based on the criteria  ebay has in place for direct and halo sales. They cannot charge a fee without determining whether those criteria have been met or not.

So, now, in Germany, they might refer to them internally as something other than direct or halo, but they will still be using the criteria as defined by direct and halo. And internally, ebay is a data driven company, and you can bet the Ads Team is going to keep track of the impacts of the different criteria. 

So, whatever they call it, and whatever they say, they ARE using the CRITERIA for direct and halo, and they COULD provide us with that data (which, as you note they will continue to do outside of Germany). They are CHOOSING not to share it with us.

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. The update clearly says they will not be using the Direct vs Halo criteria for attribution for these sales and the way the new model is described makes it pretty clear how it is different from that old model - It's not just a semantic or name difference.

"The ad fee will be charged based on the criteria  ebay has in place for direct and halo sales. They cannot charge a fee without determining whether those criteria have been met or not."

Sure they can - they can charge the fee based on the new criteria that the policy update clearly lays out, exactly as they say they will.

Aside from a general distrust of eBay (which they have very fairly earned) , I'm not sure what would make you think they aren't going to actually do what the update says they are going to do.

You know I'm not one to take eBay at their word on everything, but in this case I personally think they will likely do what it says for two reasons:

A.) Europe in general has a more robust regulatory enforcement structure around things like this, so the risk would be higher, especially when they have very clearly and explicitly put it in writing.

But more importantly and to your other points:

B.) Why would they secretly keep using the old Direct and Halo model when the new model will likely increase the number of sales on which they can claim attribution and charge a fee?

I don't have hard numbers so I'll admit I'm just guessing but I think it's definitely plausible this new model could generate more ad revenue for eBay than the old one and more importantly, I don't think eBay would be doing it if they thought it would make less revenue - for all the reasons you pointed out and more.

For now all we have is what eBay says - we'll have to wait until next month and check back in on the German forum to see what they do.