Promoted Listing Views VS External Views VS Organic Views

[easm05]

For several months I have been testing views. First off thousands of sellers are complainting to ebay, that no matter what they do, they are not getting views, and find other ways to get views, other than what ebay is telling sellers that don't work.  I predicted that ebay will continue to fall, if they keep milking sellers out of every penny with their "Highly Questionable Moves Against Sellers".  A few weeks ago the stock market took ebay off it's index list. I know that hurt all the big wigs at ebay, making them look bad.  Back to my point. During my tests on views, I notice, that if I get a large up tick in external views, my promoted listing views will stop.  My organic views will slow down. Time and time again, my promoted listing views would just stop, if I got a large number of external views. I would change the percentage of my promoted listings as high as 30 percent, and my promoted listing views will still stop, if I got a high number of external views. Meaning ebay stop my promoting listing on it's site, because traffic was coming outside of ebay.  You know it's bad when ebay has resorted to rewarding, and paying people to say good things about ebay. And retaliating if people point out the not so good things ebay has been doing for several years.  I also notice, if a seller give a good working around to get more views, to make more sells, ebay will find ways to stop it, or use it to charge another fee on sellers. The ebay community mods, and apologist in this community post will defend ebay with Pure Non-Sense, because the issue is not currently happening them, or hiding the fact for ebay, no seller should question ebay, who only give very vague answers.

[mr_lincoln · Accepted solution]

Hi @easm05 

While our categories are different let me give you a little history on my experience and testing of Promoted Listing Standard (PLS) over several years.  

 PRIOR TO 2022

-When first introduced eBay offered a quarterly $ 30 credit on PLS Ad fees.  

-I ran ONE 30 day PLS campaign per quarter taking advantage of the $ 30 credit and used 5% - 10% ad rates

-Sales jumped during the campaigns, they drove traffic

Early 2022

-eBay fully launched Promoted Listing Advanced where Sellers per-paid their Ad fees to try and be int he top 4 spots on a returned search.  Google had previously disclosed in US Senate hearings that most purchases on the inter are from the top 4 spots on a returned search and their survey revealed that is because most buyers "trusted" the internet searches to return the best choices for them on page one of a search

-eBay also changed the Views counting to only record Views for the last 30 days on listings

-My quarterly 30 day campaigns tanked, sold half or less what they did prior to these changes AND eBay magically jacked up their "Suggested" ad rates by double and triple of previous amounts.

-In between my regular campaigns BIN listings dropped in visibility and most sales came from Auction listings or eventually Offers I would send from the Send offers eligible feature on the Active list

-I experienced an ongoing slow steady decline in sales.  Then mid way through 2023 I ran a test PLS for 17 days jacking up my Ad rate to 12% which was at or above most prevailing "Suggested" rates on the items in my categories ... BANG, sales shot back up to pre-2022 levels without hesitation.  The downside is the higher rates ruined my profit margin because those and my regular FVFs totaled well over 20%.

-In 4th quarter I finally decided to NOT run my regular quarterly PLS campaign ... care to guess what happened next just past the time I would normally have the campaign up and running )mid Nov to mid Dec to cover the hot Holiday selling season)??????

eBay sent the message below starting with "We've missed you - try Promoted Listing Standard again."

WHAT???

                                 

They sent it not once but twice.

So here is what in my mind I have proven is happening.  When an account starts to use PLS eBay monitors how they use it and adjusts their visibility of the Seller's items accordingly.  If the Seller does not run a continuous campaign they bury their BIN items between campaigns.  If a Seller does not use their Suggested Ad rates or higher items are hidden, buried, etc in search stifling sales.  Their AI programming knows more about Seller tendencies than Sellers realize.  

Now let me quantify the "slow steady decline" I have experienced in the last 2 years:

-2023 was just over $ 10K behind 2022 and just over $ 12K behind 2021.  That's Gross item sales (no shipping included) and my friend, that is not chump change

-Sell through rate doubled and tripled, yes things sold but too slowly to sustain sales growth

-I was forced to move more inventory "elsewhere" during the period then any other time in 9 years of Selling

-The trend now is if new listings do not sell in the first 2-3 weeks they seem to drop off the face of the earth

-I will no longer suggest anyone to use PLS or PLA, it is a recipe for disaster over the long hall.

-Listings are controlled and manipulated by the venue's AI programming letting just enough sell to keep Sellers interested but low enough in hopes they feel the have to do SOMETHING to generate sales.   

-When it comes to trying to get more fees from Sellers or optimizing their profit from a transaction nothing is off the table for the venue.

-Regardless of the metrics you observe if your sales are slowly declining there is a good chance you have no power to change that.  

Sorry to ramble and thanks for listening ... 

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

There simply is no way to quantify such matters, there just isn't.  I'm a web/software engineer of over 30 years and there are far far too many variables at play to even consider "defacto" statements on traffic be it here, you're own website(s) or other venues.

That's not defending eBay or paid exposures, I've said it before I believe paid exposures organic at eBay eventually become zero based, too many do it, the rewards shrivel then people stop doing it.  I am proponent of what Mammazon does, have to be price competitive as that works and the proof is Mammazon or Walmart if you prefer or other retailers getting price aggressive as reported in varied Retail Association news.

Now in your statistics how do you:

Account for others coming in an using paid exposures in compare to yours?   

How do you account that maybe theirs sold. 

How do you account for sellers who come in at lower price and sold? 

How do you account for changes within Google? 

How do you account for all those big retailers sucking in the sales online resulting in dwindling dollars spent here?

How do you account for sales in retail brick and mortar post covid in comparative result?

How do you account for buyers leaving the site due to problematic transactions?

How do you account for new buyers coming in? 

How do you account for mobile usage versus computers or laptops when you've no breakdown of that data?

How do you account for new sellers coming in and by nature in listing getting more browse exposure?

How do you account for the size of those potential new sellers inventory quantities and sales?

These are but a few of the variables at play not to mention global inflation, domestic inflation, student loan payments coming back to play, consumers money strapped and more?

Odds are if and seller with items partially demand and they price things considerably lower than competitors more items will go out the door, perhaps fly out the door.

Again Mammazon listings have offers within them, sellers must compete for low price and that works, the proof is they are the #1 marketplace.  More proof is Walmart demands low price on the net against all major competitors or they hide listings/offers and they've grown online by leaps and bounds.  Temu, Shein both work towards value price AND THIS IS WHAT THE WEB IS BECOMING and people are using tiny itty bitty cellphone real-estate to shop with, not PC's, not Laptops nine in ten shoppers use mobile.

Not to put too fine a point on it as I said in another thread, they use "Ask Google" on their phones more and more and more.  Google began changes in their eCommerce search coming out of covid.  Why?  Because the big retailers have now made the Internet INTEGRAL in their business models versus more sideline.  They got caught with their pants down... WE ALL KNOW THAT.  Amazon, here and other places saw the upticks in sales.  Now, you're seeing the downtick as they CAN outcompete eBay sellers for the dollar and provide retail level confidence.

To me, the ONLY way eBay competes against whats going on in the rest of eCommerce is to do exactly what Amazon has succeeded at for years on end now.  One SKU, many offers, sellers compete to sell via price and the race to the bottom begins.  Of course sellers won't like that at all, I wouldn't.  I sold at Amazon for years, I wrote a re-pricing engine that'd drive you mad, literally.  You could have a $30 train car and the moment you changed you're price that re-price engine go lower... Drive your price lower, then Bam... You sell that car for say $22 and then the re-pricer bump mine up under the next one at say $42 and do it all over it again.  But boy howdy it worked like a dream, worked so well Amazon said "No" when we sent it in for evaluation stating, "If this competes against itself it will do serious damage to Amazon third party valuations."

With trains, well... I know a fella who's the most immense personal Lionel collection I've ever seen and about 8 months back he told me that he barely get 50% of what they WERE worth just 10 years ago.  People just dont have the money... I know a fella does slot cars, 1/24, 1/32, 1/43rd and has a HUGE Carrera Digital layout.  He's been trying sell it off...  But problem is selling things individually, he cant get the price he wants online... Basically, its sell at what it cost him so he want sell the entire thing local.

Folks just dont realize how much Covid changed everything as they want life before covid, nothing will be the same.  Just as when the Spanish Flu struck, nothing was ever the same again and the Flu is with us now over 100 years later.  Pandemic wasn't considered the "Worst possible event" before space rock, volcanos and even war for no reason.  Protocols established over 40 years time were not established due to a "What if" but instead "when."  Twice before Covid Variants SARS-1 and MERS and the USA Protocols along with the CDC TEAM in Wuhan China stopped it before it went global.  That same team was pulled out of Wuhan by the administration here right before Covid happened and to this day there is no answer as to why short of it cost a measly 1 million dollars annually to maintain yet paid for itself 1000 fold in stopping SARS-1 and MERS.  The entire protocol for handling the pandemic was literally ignored, thrown away here in the USA whilst the public was literally lied to, "We've it under control."  Yet, ANYONE in Microbiology or Virology KNEW the protocols were thrown out and that was that... Game over.  That ---IS--- the TRUTH NOR is it OVER.

Do the paid per listing statistics or traffic take into account the millions dead?  Does it take into account the numbers with long covid that have been ravaged or their medical expenses more or less general expenses across medical care now?  There are heaps of workers who've left medical care due to Covid and the risks to themselves and their families of working within an environment where Covid is not going away, likely never going away just like the Spanish Flu (Flu) never went away... It just keeps mutating and doing its damage.  We are still in a Pandemic its just folks dont care to think of that or want it to be.

The matters everyone is concerned about at the US Southern Border are all about Covid and Weather.  South America was ravaged by Covid along with weather.  That caused migration to explode as economies already that'd be below poverty here were ravaged.

Now lets add some war?  Dont think war is an impactor on consumers or fear?  Both actually.  Ukraine big exporter of grains or were, thats a commodity.  Or take sugar which has suffered due to bad growing seasons, impacts everyone.

Point being measuring what little one gets to see of traffic/sales statistics at eBay is a "Bubble," a TINY bubble.  There are way way way too many variables at play to come close to any "Defacto" reasons for either.

Can try PL this, PL that on and on... Have you tried lowering you're prices to absolute rock bottom?  Minimal profit.  Well then it's not worth doing?  THIS IS THE NEW WEB.  You're competing for sales against GIANTS in resale and they dont care what people buy, they care that they buy THERE as they consign basically everything.  They have and continue to embrace delisted, liquidation, surplus channels with spectacular deals not to mention being able work with manufacturers towards value added deals as they've the resources to do that.

I understand sellers upset, my sales are not what they were either but I dont pretend to think its all eBay's fault.  Most of it is not eBay's fault truth be told.  It's like saying, "Oh eBay is the reason most people shop by cellphone..." and oh, "Covid happened because of eBay" and oh, "Retailers were caught flat footed because of eBay..."  "Oh, and now retail is being ever so aggressive for the dollar/traffic and that's because of eBay."

[santas2sell]

My sales are tanking and the majority of my 30 day listings get ZERO views!

And these are cheap items that I saw were selling for other sellers AND I priced many of them lower than what they were currently listed for!

I don't want to drop my store. For the most part, I do enjoy it! But, if things keep going this way, it's really not worth my time and effort. Not to mention the space it takes up in my home!

[easm05]

HA,HA,HA, you are surely a ebay employee, or plant!

[easm05]

This is a long wind of nothing. Ebay themselves said it's their fault.

[easm05]

This is all BULL, from this person. A ebay worker or plant.

[mr_lincoln]

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@easm05 wrote:

HA,HA,HA, you are surely a ebay employee, or plant!

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@easm05   Oh quite contrare ... I keep decent records and notice trends ... 

[mr_lincoln]

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@easm05 wrote:

This is all BULL, from this person. A ebay worker or plant.

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@easm05   Let me kindly repeat, " Oh quite contrare ... I keep decent records and notice trends ... ".

Not sure what would make you think that?  And just so you know, I am not offended in anyway by your post.

[redlinear]

You may get "something" from promoting.  But, I've not figured out exactly when, or for how long. 
The only CERTAIN thing I see is that items like I list, DO sell. 
I list 20 "X's"....
Two weeks from now, I check SOLD items and I've sold one, and so has everybody else.

No seller is leading the way. 

I have an employee that sells a little bit of related (same as me).   He will got a couple weeks without a sale.  Then come in one Monday morning carrying 10 packages.   Thinking it was just "his" time to be seen.  And the next few weeks will belong to others selling related items.

If we are seen, our stuff sells.   Just can't figure out how to keep our items at the top of a search result.  Price won't keep it there, Promoting won't keep it there, Reputation won't keep it there. 
Selling one item with qty remaining SEEMS to keep an item in view longer, but still....not for very long.

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

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@redlinear wrote:

You may get "something" from promoting.  But, I've not figured out exactly when, or for how long. 
The only CERTAIN thing I see is that items like I list, DO sell. 
I list 20 "X's"....
Two weeks from now, I check SOLD items and I've sold one, and so has everybody else.

No seller is leading the way. 

I have an employee that sells a little bit of related (same as me).   He will got a couple weeks without a sale.  Then come in one Monday morning carrying 10 packages.   Thinking it was just "his" time to be seen.  And the next few weeks will belong to others selling related items.

If we are seen, our stuff sells.   Just can't figure out how to keep our items at the top of a search result.  Price won't keep it there, Promoting won't keep it there, Reputation won't keep it there. 
Selling one item with qty remaining SEEMS to keep an item in view longer, but still....not for very long.

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I don't believe eBay surfaces listings albeit it wouldn't be too difficult for me to write a program to test that theory.  Mammazon definitely does or at least used to back in the day.  It's a much different task as Mammazon has "offers" under a given listing and of course whomever owns the Buy Box which is where the lions share or shall I say, "Lions Pride++" share of sales happen.  Here, buckets of listings and to surface them per se as called at Amazon would be a database access/filtering nightmare to accomplish.

Now all that said it DOES make sense for eBay's search engine "Cassini" to have a very sophisticated ranking system.  I could likely as a software engineer write up 10-20 pages as to why and perhaps another set of marketing why.  Sites with hordes of list based data tend use whats known as a "fuzzy search" gathering both qualified results and related results from whatever the search string commit is.  The reason is there is so much data (listings) that w/o a fuzzy search there'd be just heaps of listings that get no or just minimal impressions.  Note, that's not a "Page View" which requires a person to click or "open" the impression.

A key in very large data sets (impressions) is balancing them.  On a PC folks might wander through one, two or three page fulls and that's it.  They'll either commit a differing search string or do something else.  On Cellphones this becomes much more tragic due to the tiny real-estate of the devices.  A buyer is not going to wander through 75+ listings (a three page PC equality) been shown time and time again.  News media websites have struggled with this since Smartphones took off and now nine in ten people surf the web via their smartphones.  Sellers often forget that or dont know as they tend to use devices with more real-estate be that a PC, Laptop or Tablet.  PC, Laptop, Tablet "Surfing" is less than 1 % that of cellphone surfing.

Smartphones are the in thing this is why it said if for example you make a game or App for a cellphone and you sell it for .99 cents and sell to one tenth of one percent of smartphone users you are a millionaire time and time again.  Don't believe it?  Hmmm?  Candy Crush Sage has made over 20 Billion Dollars as of September last year.

Cassini, the search engine here takes into account many things outside the actual search string committed to the database.  It takes into account metrics and very likely a plethora of other impactors towards display rank one of which is paid promotions obviously but there are going to be many others. 

For example... Lets say I have a huge consignment store and the frontage has a few windows for display.  Why would I put in that display something(s) that take up that precious real-estate but don't seem ever move well when I've things that will move?  I might have 25 consignor's with same product, it'd make sense for whichever one of them is getting more watching to put in my window.

If someone here has bad photos, incomplete item details on and on logic says the consumer is wanting the one appears best preferably at lowest price.  Point being there is a plethora of data going into ranking and just like you're widget display in my window doesn't seem to sell this same widget from this seller over here for whatever the reason, price, presentation, details, shipping, metrics of trust, ship times, and on and on and on DOES seem to sell.  That's the one I want in my window.

Now some folks they never consider the non-organic aggregated traffic, say Google.  They see that as an "aside" like, "Ok, cool I get some views from the outside of eBays website."  They don't consider WHERE or HOW a person might preferably search with Google.  That is to say what are the odds someone is performing a search at Google versus coming INTO eBay via mobile App or cellphone browser for what they are selling?

For me with PC Games odd's are certainly that Google is "In play" so I target Google.  I know how to do this, I'm a web developer.  1/3rd of all views I get are external and I'm sure I could probably if I made the effort bump that to 50% or more without ever paying Google a red cent.

I wish eBay had a better listing templating mechanism towards bulk loader/editor and yes, there are services out there that do that.  But I'm not paying some service ridiculous amounts of money to subscribe to an web application that is far far far far far less sophisticated than Candy Crush Saga or Scrabble.  Same with Mammazon repricers, I mean really?  If it were not for the time consumption exactly how difficult is it for you to look and change prices at Amazon, a handful of clicks and minimal thinking.  So these operations out there do that handful for you and **bleep** you in subscription fee's for what amounts to a program far less sophisticated than a word search puzzle on your cellphone.

Anyways point all being there are heaps of factors at play and eBay has determined likely due to cellphone real-estate that if a seller wants make sure things are seen, then pay for it.  No different then Progresso Soups paying for an end cap at Walmart's all over the place to sell a plethora of Soup.

Make no mistake about it, cellphones are at the top of the list of biggest problems for enterprise level data exposure towards the public.  I created and operated a website for Multiple Sclerosis patients, researchers, news etc for four years that was global translating into 128 languages.  It had to suit PC's, Screen Readers, mobile technology and believe me even at a few hundred thousand page views weekly getting proper exposure to such a large MASS of information... Big time problems even if a large portion of the site visitors were not people disabled with the health condition yet of course, a huge swath was.  In time I'd found I'd no choices but to create user interfaces for every prospect demographic of login and NOT.   That is to say medical folks be they researchers or medical professionals, Neurologist, Nephrology,  Therapeutics on and on are not looking for news or symptoms, they're looking for research data, education, therapies etc.  A family member or patients is seeking completely different data and there simply too much data to cope with under a singular user interface more or less PC, Laptop, Tablet or Cellphone, Screen Readers.

Mammazon has a natural solution on cellphones, search, there is a listing or two... Exposure to related items and click in, bam, there is every seller competing price-wise for the sale.  Don't have 4,000 listings for some item and 12,000 related.

[easm05]

What the problem with people as you, in your very flaw mindset, in thinking if it's not happening to you, it's not happening to no one. The only people who does that is those on ebay payroll, those who ebay is paying or rewarding them just to say nice things about ebay, and those ebay apologist. I know many ebay sellers who replied what I have stated in my pass posts, what I was stating was not fact, until ebay did the same to them, that effected their bottom dollar.  Now those same people are on a rant of all the wrong ebay is doing to sellers, just to maintain a little profit, due to the fact the decisions they have been making is dum, and such business model cannot last. This is why year after year ebay is falling. If selling in volume is the way to make profits like amazon, and other platforms does, ebay got away from that, and think charging sellers, high fees for every little thing, is the right way to go to make a profit. It's not working for ebay, they have been knowing this for several years now, yet they keep doubling down on dum. Even customers service agents don't know nothing, because ebay just give them a script to read to everyone. Than you will have some agent who would retaliate on your account just because you trying to explain something they don't know. Like I had to explain to a customer agent how mail is deliver in United States, and how Street addresses are, and this customer agent said she has been a agent for four years. The prisoners are running the prison. 

[mr_lincoln]

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@easm05 wrote:

What the problem with people as you, in your very flaw mindset, in thinking if it's not happening to you, it's not happening to no one. The only people who does that is those on ebay payroll, those who ebay is paying or rewarding them just to say nice things about ebay, and those ebay apologist. I know many ebay sellers who replied what I have stated in my pass posts, what I was stating was not fact, until ebay did the same to them, that effected their bottom dollar.  Now those same people are on a rant of all the wrong ebay is doing to sellers, just to maintain a little profit, due to the fact the decisions they have been making is dum, and such business model cannot last. This is why year after year ebay is falling. If selling in volume is the way to make profits like amazon, and other platforms does, ebay got away from that, and think charging sellers, high fees for every little thing, is the right way to go to make a profit. It's not working for ebay, they have been knowing this for several years now, yet they keep doubling down on dum. Even customers service agents don't know nothing, because ebay just give them a script to read to everyone. Than you will have some agent who would retaliate on your account just because you trying to explain something they don't know. Like I had to explain to a customer agent how mail is deliver in United States, and how Street addresses are, and this customer agent said she has been a agent for four years. The prisoners are running the prison. 

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Hi again @easm05 

I am a little confused and think you might have me confused with someone else.  If you go back to the first page of replies to your post and read what I posted you will see it was a fairly comprehensive explanation of the slow steady decline in sales that I have experienced over the last two years. 

I love Selling on eBay but the operative word is Selling and when that stops or significantly slows down one has to investigate to find the reasons.  I did that and can point to the reasons based on my own experience, testing, observation, record keeping, etc. 

As an update to that post and the message eBay sent about using PLS again I have now received a total of five messages from eBay suggesting I try PLS (2) or Try it again (3).  I have also received a message to try promoting via Google Ads.  This is all in the last 2 1/2 months so it's not some regular sales promotion campaign the venue is running ... because the prior YEARS of using PLS once per quarter for 30 days I never got those messages to try PLS ... it was only when I stopped using it 4th quarter last year that I started getting those messages ... and sales continue to decline and Views continue to  decline, Impressions continue to decline, etc.  So reading between the lines for my specific experience and selling history the message is pretty clear, if one is not willing to pay extra fees to promote their listings then sales will not grow.  

The direction that eBay is heading will most likely work for some but not for others.  I am in the "others" group at the moment waiting to see if sales recover naturally ... if they do great ... 

[vintagecraze50]

Competition in price is a sellers worst enemy whether you you promoted this or that on here. We use promoted standard and give Ebay an extra 2 percent for over 200 of our listings monthly AND we price this stuff competitively, ALWAYS, watching other peoples prices, pictures and content to make SURE our items look good, have accurate descriptions. Keywords that work, and PRICE better than our competitions, and we sell pretty darn good. We end promoted when they look like they are not getting much views,  then relist, then still promoted tweak the pictures and title when we do this and at times just doing this pulls the listing up and it sells. We use white background and extremely clear large photo of item and Google picks them up in the search results there as well.

[siamjane8]

@mr_lincoln  You hit the nail directly on the head with this statement/ observance ---"Listings are controlled and manipulated by the venue's AI programming letting just enough sell to keep Sellers interested but low enough in hopes they feel the have to do SOMETHING to generate sales. "

     The steady decline of sales and ebay platform as a whole started 6-7 years ago as they implemented more and more AI.  It was not to make search better or more intuitive as we were told, but instead to give ebay more power over what is seen and sold on the platform.....more control...... instead of just showing people what they searched for (what a novel idea), they wanted to monopolize the search and pit sellers( actual ebay customers) against one another all the while skimming more profits without doing anything.

    Its no doubt- this is why the " ebay hides my listings" started..... because they do- in an effort to make sellers desperate for sales while they have "the solution" for just 10-20% more in PL fees.

   We have had zero growth for 5 years straight/ actually sell less year over year regardless of the economy and the fact they we have doubled our available listings to around 5000.... There is nothing organic about this. It is completely manipulated by algorithms to maintain a certain monthly gross sales. Its as plain as the nose on your face. If you have a "good" day- sales plumet to "adjust".  If sales are slow- then there will be a flurry of sales within hours of the the end of the week or month.... and every month we are at the same amount of sales- no growth / no opportunity to grow a business on ebay. 

    Sales, times listings are shown, places to which listings are show, certain categories that are shown, and probably a bunch of other variables go into keeping sellers sales at what ebay has determined.   Its like a glass ceiling.