Offsite Ads - ROAS For Sellers

[wilsonharborsales]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to ask the board a question.  Are you using Off-site Ads Beta?  If so, what is your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)? 

Many sellers in my seller network are reporting a ROAS of 1x-4x, otherwise stated, 25%-100% of sales revenue off-site is spent on ads.  When combined with a PLS campaign, sellers are stating that 40%-100% of total off-site revenue is put towards ad spend.  I do not believe this is sustainable for most sellers.

Sellers who are using off-site ads, do you know where your store is promoted, how it is promoted, which regions it is promoted in, and at what times the store is promoted?  Keywords are not required, so I am not sure how the stores are promoted.  I read the eBay ads site and it does not say.

I would be interested if the community weighed in on this.  I want to make this campaign work because it is promising, but return on investment appears to be dismal (especially since we are in the hottest part of the shopping season).

Cheers!

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

Its all in my "When I get to it" engineering reading but I know Google is changing up their attribution models if they haven't already deprecating what was in place towards more machine learning mechanisms.  Presumably again I've not dove into the technical aspects of it these will favor big retail and a more diverse culture to to target product groupings.  Google doesn't like to release full scope of things ever, thats just culture there.  For example I know its been said that Amazon Ad's are better for commerce entities because they are in complete targeting of merchandise.  But, depending on what types of machine learning mechanisms Google is working upon it may or may not be third party seller per se beneficial.  I'd wager to say they'll move towards grouping based as that favors big retailers.  Having large product diversity has never been search engine favorable.

For example, eBay will use a "Fuzzy search" as if they didn't with the amount product data here there would be hordes of listings never even get impressions.  People yell "Search Engine's Broken," no.  It's not.   By nature it seeks to provision a fair exposure ratios to product given that sellers all give differing descriptions and consumers might type in diverse search criteria.

Groupings afford better search results in response to a persons search query which is why varied "Meta-Tags" exist for various types of search engines and differing algorithms exist towards groups of search criteria.  For example, News sites there's plethora's of them and its favorable to get their content into search as fast and as logically grouped as possible.  They'll be multiple algorithms applied in both committing to the database(s) as well as that of any user search get most relevant results.

For example I dont target eBay's search engine, I target Google.  I'm a software/web engineer and since I'm peddling retro PC Games I'm much more akin to wanting target the external demographics than internal of people coming to eBay to seek something.  30% thereabouts of my traffic according to eBay analytics is external.

Now the more diverse a sellers inventory is the less the odd's of effective ranking across the search engine.  Same reason say Walmart has navigational subdivisions as not only does it help consumers who are browsing navigate but it also affords the search groupings.  Again now depending on the Machine Learning Models Google is working at sellers will see differing results.  I'm gonna wager to bet they are favorable towards big retail because big retail has nearly all mainstreamed the Web some favoring it over Brick and Mortar now post Covid and they have money.  Google has also been accused numerous ways, many times, varied years of their algorithms being unfavorable to the mass.  Proper machine learning change that, balancing data no matter the "Seller" or "Venue" paid advertising aside.  That's not necessarily favorable to diverse inventories but is towards groupings.

The days of "keyword" mappings are long since falling wayside in favor of higher resolution data and groupings.  Sellers here howl and yell about product details entry taking time!  Well its that data that helps locate product both internal and external so dont complain of page views when that data isn't there.  Regardless of that, if the pricing and all such other factors are just stupid consumers wont buy.

Not that long ago in Google Searches for products you'd see handfuls of eBay listings come up at Google.  No longer, have to specify eBay if you want that full gambit.  Likely why eBay has deployed this ad's platform interface to Google and consistency counts.  When people do things where software engineering technologies are involved yet have no idea about how or why etc. those technologies operate the worst the results are going to be.  As put it another post by an individual understands that, "Garbage in... Garbage out..." is one of the oldest software engineering paradigms to exist.  AI/Machine Learning serves to help that equation but is by no means a complete solution.  95% of folks who set up an online storefront at their own domain fail because they don't care get the education to succeed. 

It's like a car versus a race car.  Most everyone can drive a car, most everyone who does if put in a race car will spin, crash, etc. as you don't drive a race car like you drive on the streets, not at all.  Tires have "Grip" and in race car you want maximize that.  Tires have allot of work to do as they are pressed into the surface.  In a street car many folks for example brake whilst cornering, in a race car now you're asking the tires to hold cornering weight, and slow the car down in a corner... Not good.  In a race car you get your braking done before you ever turn the wheel and you want make sure the platform is as stable as can be when making that turn into the most efficient way through a corner setting up for what's after that corner.

With an eCommerce storefront one needs to know how to best target ways to draw traffic to the storefront and that's multiple ways some of which are dynamic, some of which are more static, long term.  Marketing is WAY WAY WAY more complex than software engineering, not even comparable.  As an example of how daft most folks are in the former all one need do is look at politics, the sale of a human to humans.  Folks will buy narratives or simply ridiculous conducts being "Marketed to."

Anyone one think for example Mr. Trump is bombastic in a board room?  When cutting deals with nations for resorts, golf courses?  Dealing with bank officers or other CEO's?  No way.  But the outrageous conduct is all marketing that is appealing to ever so many Americans just as say adult Americans were all delighted by things such as "The Family Guy", "Simpsons", "South Park", literally cartoons that stray to the outrageous whilst money is raked in.  Media companies love the man, huge audiences no matter the biasing and the money pours in whilst most of the rest of people on the planet are saying, "Oh my gosh... Everything we thought Americans are about is a lie."

"Make America Great Again..."  Absolutely brilliant, not his thinking, came from Reagan and Mr. Priebus said lets use that!   Like America wasn't and isn't already the greatest nation on Earth.  Duh, but folks eat it up.

Just like political marketing be it a webstore or listings here its important to know how the mechanisms work for best results.  All that aside every single buyer is an individual unique variable with traits and thats why marketing is more complex than software engineering.  Software engineering has boundaries that it lives within, not so with human beings.

[valueaddedresource]

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@wilsonharborsales wrote:

Hi everyone,

I'd like to ask the board a question.  Are you using Off-site Ads Beta?  If so, what is your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)? 

Many sellers in my seller network are reporting a ROAS of 1x-4x, otherwise stated, 25%-100% of sales revenue off-site is spent on ads.  When combined with a PLS campaign, sellers are stating that 40%-100% of total off-site revenue is put towards ad spend.  I do not believe this is sustainable for most sellers.

Sellers who are using off-site ads, do you know where your store is promoted, how it is promoted, which regions it is promoted in, and at what times the store is promoted?  Keywords are not required, so I am not sure how the stores are promoted.  I read the eBay ads site and it does not say.

I would be interested if the community weighed in on this.  I want to make this campaign work because it is promising, but return on investment appears to be dismal (especially since we are in the hottest part of the shopping season).

Cheers!

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@wilsonharborsales  anecdotally, I've heard from several sellers that ROAS for Offsite Ads has been horrible, in line with what you've mentioned here.

Many of those sellers are currently taking advantage of eBay's offer of $100 credit for trying it out, so it may not be a big deal since they "aren't really paying for it" but I suspect we may start to hear more complaints about it if/as sellers currently testing it out start having to foot 100% of the bill.

A couple other thoughts/questions:

When combined with a PLS campaign, sellers are stating that 40%-100% of total off-site revenue is put towards ad spend.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "when combined with a PLS campaign."

For external placements, Offsite Ads and PLS External are an either/or thing - items can be in one or the other but not both.

Per Offsite Ads FAQ:

Once you’ve created an Offsite Ads campaign, your listings can only appear on external channels through that campaign. They won’t be eligible to appear on external channels via your Promoted Listings Standard campaigns.

However, it is my understanding that items enrolled in Offsite Ads can still be in PL Standard campaigns and if they are, will still be eligible for onsite placements in the eBay network (eBay search, listing pages etc.) even if they aren't being shown in external placements as a PL Standard ad.

In theory it may be possible for a seller to incur both an Offsite Ad cost per click fee and a PL Standard cost per sale fee, but that would require something like the buyer clicking through to the listing from an Offsite Ad on Google, then once on the listing either navigating away and then navigating back to that same listing through on onsite PL Standard ad or navigating to some of the seller's other items in a way that could trigger the "halo" ad attribution.

To be clear, I haven't personally heard from anyone saying they've been charged for both kinds of ad fees, but I do think it's at least possible and If this is happening frequently, I'd definitely be interested in hearing some examples/details.

Sellers who are using off-site ads, do you know where your store is promoted, how it is promoted, which regions it is promoted in, and at what times the store is promoted?

Just to avoid confusion here, to my knowledge, Offsite Ads does not promote your "store", it promotes individual listings. Promoted Display Ads are the only type of ad that I'm aware of which allows sellers to promote a store and those ad placements are only on eBay.

The short answer to the rest of your questions is - you as the seller do not get to see or control any of that, you just have to trust eBay.

I hope that they plan to eventually build out greater reporting capability and manual controls, but with the current version of the program the only thing the seller can control is the daily budget and start and ends dates of the campaign.

You do not get to select which listings are included, which keywords are used, set maximum per click bid amounts, select regions or time periods to target or avoid, or even choose where the ad is actually shown (Google, Bing, etc.) - you literally only get to choose a daily budget and the start and end of the campaign and eBay supposedly "optimizes" the rest.

Keep in mind that doesn't mean keywords aren't being used/required by Google (or wherever) when the ads are submitted, it just means that you as the seller do not get any input whatsoever into what those keywords are.

If eBay is not optimizing these ads very well, that would be a big part of why the ROAS is so abysmal. I'd even go so far as to suggest one reason they are throwing out ad credits to entice sellers to test it out is they likely need more data to feed into their AI/algorithms/whatever models they are using to try to improve optimization and these credits basically allow them to "buy" seller adoption (even if short term) to get the data they need.

I have not yet seen what reporting looks like for these ads, but I think it's safe to say you're unlikely to get any kind of granular data beyond high level "impressions" and "clicks". 

[valueaddedresource]

Actually, from this thread in the UK community, it sounds likely you won't even get to see impressions, only clicks. One of the staff members there had to check "internally" to confirm there were impressions for this seller who was concerned their Offsite Ad campaign was broken.

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Technical-Issues/Offsite-ads-campaigns-broken/m-p/7529257#M22179

I checked this internally and can see impressions for these ads, however no clicks yet, meaning your listings have appeared to potential buyers in search results on external search engines, but they haven't clicked on them yet. We would only show data once there are clicks.

[albany_sellers]

I have had the offer, but am not even playing that game of "give us more money or else no sales for you"

Promoted listings standard is enough, and even that is a farce and a cash grab. A lot of sellers don't remember that before even than was around, sales were just about the same as they are now with everybody promoted.

The whole promotions thing was designed with that in mind, and after they milked us for all they could with standard, PLA came around, and now it's offsite adds to try and reach into our pockets even deeper.

The whole goal is to make it so that if you want to just maintain your previous volume of sales, you have to pay more, and more while really getting nothing in return other than what you were already getting before your sales were sabotaged.

Promotions are all about shifting the goalposts to the NEW normal where unless you pay up, your sales end up in the toilet, with the added bonus of it being "your fault" because you "opted out"

[wilsonharborsales]

Hi VAR!

I can only speak anecdotally as well, but a few sellers have reported being charged promoted fees for their off-site ad sales.  I can't really speak to that, because I haven't noticed that myself but I also have not been watching too closely either.  I was not offered the $100 offsite beta credit, but I decided to try it anyway to get some sales traction.  My off-site ROAS is in the 4x range, very low in my opinion but I will keep it running for the remainder of the month.   Unfortunately if off-site ad performance does not improve, I will have to drop it from my budget.  It is very difficult to sell one-off items and utilize the off-site tool if ROAS is this low.  At my current off-site ROAS metric, approximately 50%+ of my gross sales are going to fees and another 25% to COGS.  This leaves almost nothing to reinvest in inventory and pay the costs associated in running a business.  These ROASs are only sustainable if you are doing 100-200 sales per day, but at 15 sales a day or less, it is impossible.  Cheers, JG

[windycityart4u]

Probably wouldn't try it. I give too much percentages for promotion already. This service used to be built in and eBay items were visible on Google. No thanks. They take enough milk from me every month.