eBay has changed the Traffic report page in Seller Hub and, much like the Ad Dashboard changes, the new version leaves a lot to be desired as far as transparency.
Screenshot in this thread if you haven't seen the new experience yet:
In addition to the fact that Impressions, Views, and Sales are now in separate tabs rather than the stacked viewed on one page we had before, sellers no longer have visibility to the aggregate totals for Top 20 Search Spot Impressions, Rest of Search Slot Impressions, and Non-Search Impressions.
Old version:
New version - only shows those stats for individual listings, but no longer has the total.
It's also concerning that they seem to have changed definitions of some things, leaving it not quite clear where views from Promoted Listings General cost per sale External placements are included in the new report.
The old report defined "Promoted Listings" views as "visits to a listing page from a Promoted Listings ad shown on eBay."
And External Site Views as "visits to a listing page from external sites, including search engines, offsite ads, and promoted listings ads shown outside of eBay."
That meant that Promoted Listings General ads views that came from external placements were included in that external site views statistic.
The new reports are much less clear about where those External General Cost Per Sale views may be accounted for - if they are at all.
Promoted Listings is now defined as "total visits to your listings on eBay from your Promoted Listings campaigns." Because this specifies on eBay placements only, that rules out any external placements being included in this stat.
A new line has been added for Promoted Offsite, which is defined as "total visits to your listings off eBay from your Promoted Offsite campaigns."
Since this specifies off eBay placements, these are obviously only views from external sources but since it also specifies only Promoted Offsite campaigns, that rules out the possibility of Promoted General External views being included in this stat.
And now External is defined as "total visits to your listings off eBay, including from search engines. Excludes listings you paid to promote."
Since this specifies off eBay, that would of course be views from external sources, but because it also explicitly states it excludes listings you paid to promote, it can't possibly count Promoted Listings General External views.
So where are those Promoted Listings General External views supposed to be accounted for now?
It looks like you can still see the breakdown for PL General External in the downloadable CSV report (for now) but that's more cumbersome, requires additional clicks and action, and again is done on a per item basis which makes it more difficult to see the bigger picture aggregate numbers.
devon@ebay kyle@ebay can you ask the product team to clarify where Promoted Listings General External views are shown on the charts in the new Traffic page design?
I did a small test this morning. I do not use Offsite ads and all of my listings are in PL General campaigns.
Using incognito with Chrome, I found several of my ornaments displaying "Sponsored" when I searched Google. I screenshot my views data to report for Today before clicking on any of the Google results. Then, I clicked on five of my ornaments ads to open the listings on eBay from the Google array. When I went back to my Traffic data for Today, the Promoted Listings view count increased by 5, while the External views remained at 0. So, at least with this small test, it looks like views from "Sponsored" listings on Google report for Promoted Listings views on the Traffic page.
@valueaddedresource wrote:
@mcdougle4248 wrote:
Yes, it does look like there has been a change to reporting PL General external views. Do you know if the Social share views are only reported under the Analytics button on the Social page? It seems like those views would be external as well.
@mcdougle4248 that's a great question! I always assumed they were included in External previously and would assume they still would be given the current definition of External since those aren't PL ads, I would think they would have to be classified as "organic views off eBay" but haven't tested it.
devon@ebay kyle@ebay could you ask the product teams to confirm that as well please?
Take a look at these screenshots...this makes me wonder if the Social views (visits) are included in External, or maybe they are going into organic, or maybe they are not counted at all on the Traffic page 🙃
@robbie31415 yep, that was in the Impressions By Placements section which is no longer shown as an aggregate total number, now only available on a per item basis in the listing reports.
I'd highly recommend letting eBay know what you think about that by using the little question mark in the bottom right of the Traffic page to submit feedback.
