eBay

marya_67 · ‎06-28-2023

Hi all

I’m just wondering how everyone has been getting on with the dynamic ad strategy. I think eBay did a soft launch but I instantly jumped on it and let it do its thing as I have noticed since Christmas that across many categories the suggested ad rates have practically doubled. What settings have you found works? I used capped 10% and -.5% of suggested ad rate. I’m winging it really but my sales are better now, haven’t calculated profits as yet as it’s only a couple weeks.

my-cottage-books-and-antiques · ‎09-02-2023

@lacshirle-8 do you have a cap on your rates?

siamjane8 · ‎09-02-2023

The dynamic rate increase tool with ebay is just shear evil!. Completely takes advantage of its most vulnerable sellers. Basically dynamic promoted just works against everyone. You give a computer the permission to just rip you off. lets say i do 5% today. you have you add rate set for dynamic. it moves yours to 5.1%. then within minutes- i'm out- so it raises my rate to 5.2%...... but wait - you are dynamic also so it raises yours to 5.3%and so on and so on!!!! next thing you know its at 20% like people are reporting. Its not sustainable- it preys on the very sellers that bring the product and revenue to ebay.

Promoted listings is destroying ebay

ed8108 · ‎09-02-2023

@siamjane8 wrote:

You get 2 reasonable results and 78 unrelated items that are promoted... Then you must search through this to find what you should have been shown on the original search page....
.... With every update and more and more AI and more and more promoted listing gimmicks- sales and gmv keep falling, quarter after quarter......

Change has certainly come to ebay, now what's your move

joliztoyco · ‎09-02-2023

"Promoted listings is destroying ebay"

Yes they will.
You really have to blame it all on eBay's leadership.
Their "solution" to DECLINING sales?
Auction off those "declining" sales to the highest bidding seller under the guise of "promoted listings".
It wasn't to launch a massive ad campaign (using some of the half a BILLION stock buyback monies) to promote eBay's money back guarantee and attract new buyers.
It wasn't to lower or even eliminate FVF's for small sellers like eBay Germany did, hoping to attract new sellers and entice some of the MILLIONS of sellers who have quit the platform to return.
Nope. The idiot execs at eBay decided that doubling down on PL's was the way to go. And it's working so "well".
Look at how eBay's GMV has "boomed".
Look at all the buyers and sellers that have that have come flooding back to the platform.
Yeah....I'm not seeing it either.
And filed under the "law of unintended consequences" is the absolute joke the search engine has become as eBay tries to pack more and more PL's into a potential buyers search. PL's that have little to do with what the buyer is looking for.
What a dumpsterfire.
Even more entertaining are the sellers and their "searchsplaining" that goes something like this:
"Click on this...and then click on that...and maybe go to advanced search and enter this, blah, blah, blah.
Clueless alert!! You've spent years on eBay honing your search skills.
A new buyer on here only knows that they entered what they were looking for, and a wall of confusing crap was shown to them. Items they weren't even looking for.

Cheer up.
It can't get any worse, can it?

the-hook-and-the-loop · ‎09-02-2023

The good news is, the top execs should be on their way out soon. I'm sure they'll get a nice payday, but at least they will be gone.

gurlcat · ‎09-03-2023

@joliztoyco wrote:

And filed under the "law of unintended consequences" is the absolute joke the search engine has become as eBay tries to pack more and more PL's into a potential buyers search. PL's that have little to do with what the buyer is looking for.

That's if you're giving them the credit of actually giving sellers what we pay for by promoting. How many posts have we seen here where raising promotion rates made no difference in raising sales or even views on test items, that would suggest higher promotion gives higher exposure in search results? I know what definitely has raised though: the portion of my sold items that ebay claims were sold via promotions, when they DO sell. What's soooo insidious about that is the gaslighting effect of it. It suggests, "SEE? It's working more and more for you!" but no, that's actually .... not .... UGH, I can't even untangle how to word it, but hopefully you know what I mean.

I've seen some saying, and I agree, that the search algorithm just seems utterly confused at this point, like it's so overburdened with criteria and weighting of those criteria, it can no longer sort results with any logic at all.

the-hook-and-the-loop · ‎09-03-2023

What is so blatant, is eBay is stating 90% of my sales were "SOLD VIA PROMOTED LISTINGS" when it's repeat customers buying the same item that they have purchased over and over. I was told I need to educate my buyers to not click on a sponsored listing. What about when buyers go through their purchase history and buy again. I have sent links to an item through messaging when a potential buyer was looking for a certain item only for the sale to be "SOLD VIA PROMOTED LISTINGS". Don't even get me started on the "HALO" sale. There is a vault at eBay headquarters with all of the HALO money just filling up for the next golden parachute. But I'm sure a lot of the promotion revenue goes to legal problems and restitution as well.

dbfolks166mt · ‎09-03-2023

What settings have you found works?

Easy one - 0 works best for me.

the-hook-and-the-loop · ‎09-03-2023

As of now, not promoting works better than promoting. Maybe they finally realized how much revenue they were losing on good old fashioned organic sales.

siamjane8 · ‎09-03-2023

lol- i agree....... not promoting is the best best. even if just to save you the hassle and frustration of trying to unravel the distrust of whether or not it was a real promoted click through or a halo or just made up!

@gurlcat as to what you were saying above- people assuming that the higher you promote- the more views or sales you would expect. That is the magic of the scam for ebay..... nothing really changes- the placement is still the same, the amount of promotion is the same irrelevant impressions on other listings, etc, and the same sellers are using the PL- so nothing is changing other than the same sellers are raising the PL fees they spend!

Ebay has only so much effective real-estate to promote with. Paying a higher rate is just that- you are paying more for the same placement because ebay told someone else the rate needs to be higher- and then ebay comes back to you and says to up your PL % to be competitive. It just keeps going up and up for the same product that is saturated and overused and honesty is hated by buyers- all buyers want is to be shown what they searched for and let them choose. Nobody wants a bunch of irrelevant listings shoved down their throats.

gurlcat · ‎09-03-2023

@siamjane8 wrote:
lol- i agree....... not promoting is the best best. even if just to save you the hassle and frustration of trying to unravel the distrust of whether or not it was a real promoted click through or a halo or just made up!
@gurlcat as to what you were saying above- people assuming that the higher you promote- the more views or sales you would expect. That is the magic of the scam for ebay..... nothing really changes- the placement is still the same, the amount of promotion is the same irrelevant impressions on other listings, etc, and the same sellers are using the PL- so nothing is changing other than the same sellers are raising the PL fees they spend!
Ebay has only so much effective real-estate to promote with. Paying a higher rate is just that- you are paying more for the same placement because ebay told someone else the rate needs to be higher- and then ebay comes back to you and says to up your PL % to be competitive. It just keeps going up and up for the same product that is saturated and overused and honesty is hated by buyers- all buyers want is to be shown what they searched for and let them choose. Nobody wants a bunch of irrelevant listings shoved down their throats.

So ... just so I'm clear here ....you're saying promotions only put listings in the 'See other items' modules on listing pages and that's all? More to the point, all the sellers in these threads (including this one) complaining that promoted listings are pushing their listings down in the MAIN search results pages, and having their promoted items show up in results that aren't even appropriate .... those people are WRONG?

I'm not saying that's true or not true, just trying to understand if that is what you're asserting.

siamjane8 · ‎09-03-2023

@gurlcat No your correct-PL do all of those things and that is why they are so bad for the platform- ebay wants more and more sellers to use them so they need to find more space-so its in the search (pushing organic results lower), in the promoted carousels and modules, and most certainly in completely irrelevant places just so they can say "look at all the impressions you got!".

They have been dialing back some of the PL search placements because it was getting so bad that people were getting no relevance to their searches at all which does nothing for conversion and sales- but now people who promote are complaining that their PL are farther down and not converting to sales either

There is only so much room in the search- basically PL are oversold! like when an airplane overbooks the flight. So they just keep adding more and more modules....but that does not make them relevant to the buyers search so what good does it do? none- hence all the frustration with promoted listings and people assuming( no doubt by design) that they must raise their rate % to get back up at the top.

This is a short term money grab as the PL program is already exploding from within.

Best thing for conversion is to show people what they searched for and all relevant options . period. That is the opposite of what PL are at the core.... Pay to Play is not relevant and its not advertising.