Promoted Listings Advanced

[katzrul15]

Have read thru this a couple of times.  

Will this mean that PLs as we know them now will essentially be worthless/not effective?

A little concerning as we use PLs quite a bit currently.  Not certain our budget can work for the PL Advanced or that I have a "daily" budget for PL Advanced?

Thoughts?  

How Promoted Listings AdvancedBETA works

Promoted Listings AdvancedBETA is based on a cost-per-click model. You start by deciding how much each keyword and click is worth to you. Next, you bid to target placements at the top of eBay search results. Top placements show your listings to buyers right when they’re looking for your items across all experiences on eBay, including desktop, mobile, and the eBay app.

With this new type of campaign, you’ll be able to:

• Bid for the top slot in search using keyword and budget controls, and pay per click.
• Select the keywords that matter to you.
• Set a daily budget for additional control.

To set up your first campaign, go to the Seller Hub Marketing tab. You can create a new campaign within the Advertising dashboard by following these simple steps:

1. Name your campaign.
2. Choose dates and a daily budget.
3. Name your Ad Group.
4. Add your listings and keywords to the Ad Group.
5. Select a maximum cost-per-click for the keywords, displayed as “CPC bids” in the tool.

Review your campaign after you complete these steps.

Top tips

• Use features like suggested keywords and bids to help you set up effective campaigns.
• Include high-quality listings in your campaign with complete and accurate item specifics and great photos for the best chance of gaining high visibility. In addition to your bid, factors including keyword relevancy, listing quality, competition, and daily budget determine whether your ad will appear in the number one position.
• Use the daily budget feature to manage your ad spend.

You can also use both Promoted Listings Standard and Advanced together to help achieve maximum visibility for your ad placements across the eBay network, and utilize both budget approaches for your ad spend.

Coming later this month—Promoted Listings AdvancedBETA

Starting at the end of this month, Promoted Listings AdvancedBETA will be available to all eligible Promoted Listings sellers. If you’re eligible, you’ll be able to opt in to Promoted Listings AdvancedBETA to start bidding for the highly coveted top spot in the search results, as soon as it’s accessible.

All existing Promoted Listings campaigns will automatically be renamed Promoted Listings Standard campaigns, without you having to do anything. The only changes will be to the name and attribution logic.

[nuclearomen]

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@zamo-zuan wrote:

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@blacktopautoparts wrote:

Another huge glitch that we uncovered is that when you have a promotion running, normally the banner shows the promotion in the listings and your store, is not appearing **bleep**

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I can't forget a glitch that we've been facing for months where if we try to set a "Free Shipping" promotion, it will switch ALL of the listings to "Local Pickup Only"! 

We've had to manually fix THOUSANDS of listings that got the appropriate shipping boxes mixed up due to this glitch. And it still isn't fixed, apparently.

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@zamo-zuan ouch...not good... even with bulk editor that many listings can take long time to process to update. I would keep calling ebay about it for tech support to fix, even if they have ticket in already, I'd just keep complaining. 

[nuclearomen]

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@nilis13 wrote:

I messaged ebay via Facebook.  Rep flat out told me even though my items are being seen, I would now get more sales via the new promoted click to pay!!! So, days of no sales, traffic and views down. I knew this wasn't going to be good. I'm not making sales and there are no guarantees that paying per click will increase my sales. But, I'm pretty much guaranteed no sales unless I pay per click?

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@nilis13 ...and in a month from now when ebay looses millions in sales FVF for their decision to only push PLA listings you will see them rush to try and "fix" it.

[Anonymous]

I have not been affected yet but today finally slowed down after I was on track for 10k in sales this month for the first time.

I've noticed when listing parts that ebay is doing something extremely stupid to try to promote these paid listings.   I searched for a spark plug I was listing as I always do this to see what price I should charge.   On the top of the search results page there was a message "Ebay has hidden some search results, click here to view all search results".     The spark plug I was searching for by part number did not come up until I clicked "view all search results"    Ebay is showing a bunch of irrelevant information before people click this option in an effort to push promoted listing advanced.

This will make both buyers and sellers to leave the platform.

[nuclearomen]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have not been affected yet but today finally slowed down after I was on track for 10k in sales this month for the first time.

I've noticed when listing parts that ebay is doing something extremely stupid to try to promote these paid listings.   I searched for a spark plug I was listing as I always do this to see what price I should charge.   On the top of the search results page there was a message "Ebay has hidden some search results, click here to view all search results".     The spark plug I was searching for by part number did not come up until I clicked "view all search results"    Ebay is showing a bunch of irrelevant information before people click this option in an effort to push promoted listing advanced.

This will make both buyers and sellers to leave the platform. 

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Ebay has done for this long time now in categories/items where there are tons of them...if your not finding the part it would be due to sellers placing incorrect info in titles/specifics

[iamonourside]

There is not one #1 spot available. There are hundreds of thousands of #1 spots. At the least, there is a #1 spot available for every buyer of a given product.  There is also a #1 spot for each possible combination of key words that define a product. (If my competitor and I choose different combination of keywords, we are no longer bidding against one another for the #1 spot.)

As a result, eBay will move along the demand curve for clicks, reaping the highest willingness to pay for clicks from each successively highest bidding seller of each product.

And no participant in the PLA will ever have an unexpended balance left in their promotions budget at the end of the period.

[iamonourside]

One can no longer argue that PLS provides a leg-up to poor quality sellers. eBay stopped giving "sponsored" spots aka promoted spots to a listing based on its relative promotional ad rate a long, long time ago, if they ever did.

That is another reason it makes no sense to give away a promotional ad rate of more than 1%. Now, a promoted listing competes against all the other promoted listings for promoted spots by the same criteria as determines your listing's spot in organic search results.

That is, the promoted ad rate makes no difference in the visibility of your promoted listing.

That is why, as reported by many, I see pay off from promoting at a 1% ad rate, and no change in outcomes, just a gift to eBay , to set any higher ad rate. 

[iamonourside]

I had stated up stream that the  PLS slots are not allocated based on comparative ad rates. That may be true (I think it is still true), but I have just seen that ad rates are stated in the kitchen soup of factors that  influence allocation of PLS spots.

This is a change from eBay statements before the advent of PLA. I had a reply from eBay staff to that effect in another thread.  Moot point or just lip service to differentiate products. 

If eBay were seriously using the ad rate to choose listings for promoted spots, it would be more consistently and responsibly addressed. eBay =would have continued their ad rate trends report. The recommended ad rate I see in seller's hub wouldn't be different that the recommended rate appearing in the listing frame. And, especially the recommended rate would change depending on my chosen ad rate. i.e. When my ad rate is 1% the seller hub recommended is 2%. When I increased my ad rate to 2%, the recommendation became 5%.

[iamonourside]

Your chart does not speak to your point, or any point. It is impressions (on vertical axis) by day (on horizontal axis). The chart scale is two days to a hash mark. One month over the entire chart. 

The plunging segment of line is always there and is meaningless. The last point of the line is impression for the day you made the chart, which are only impressions for part of the day.  The last full day of comparable reporting for one full day was the day before the chart was made.

Ignoring the last day's partial day impressions, the chart shows your total impressions have trended up over the month.

The last segment of the line is ALWAYS plunging in this chart and should be ignored  when drawing conclusions. The last point on the chart is impression for the current day; impressions for the current day are always for just part of the day, not the entire day, and will always be down dramatically from the prior day which is a count of impressions for the entire day.

Ignoring that last point and the meaningless drop to connect the dots, our chart indicates your total impressions saw a gentle bump over the last couple of days, ending the day before the chart was printed for posting here

[nuclearomen]

That is true, the last part of the graph - current day won't show total impressions for 24 hrs.

[nuclearomen]

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@iamonourside wrote:

If eBay were seriously using the ad rate to choose listings for promoted spots, it would be more consistently and responsibly addressed. eBay =would have continued their ad rate trends report. The recommended ad rate I see in seller's hub wouldn't be different that the recommended rate appearing in the listing frame. And, especially the recommended rate would change depending on my chosen ad rate. i.e. When my ad rate is 1% the seller hub recommended is 2%. When I increased my ad rate to 2%, the recommendation became 5%.

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Suggested rates are generally always set more by ebay then what actual "trends" are. You'll notice that (and it's always been this way - always!) that when you start item on promoted listing the suggested rate will be really high, after you enter into PL that suggested rate will fall and continue and will settle between 1 and 3%. This is one reason why why ebay pushed PLS-D (daily rate) because they always set it higher then should be. Many items there is very little to no sale history on via terra peak to justify the initial suggested rates ebay places. Another example of ebay misleading sellers to get more money on FVF on a sale then is needed. There is no reason to elect more then 1-2% on PLS, any more your just giving them more free money for nothing. Everyone and their mother uses PLS for all listings these days, a higher election rate won't sell item faster.  As it is when PLS began sales on PL were around 70-90%, since it has increasingly and steadily fallen to where amount of sales on PL a month is now under 15%, everything else sells on normal listing. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@iamonourside wrote:

One can no longer argue that PLS provides a leg-up to poor quality sellers. eBay stopped giving "sponsored" spots aka promoted spots to a listing based on its relative promotional ad rate a long, long time ago, if they ever did.

That is another reason it makes no sense to give away a promotional ad rate of more than 1%. Now, a promoted listing competes against all the other promoted listings for promoted spots by the same criteria as determines your listing's spot in organic search results.

That is, the promoted ad rate makes no difference in the visibility of your promoted listing.

That is why, as reported by many, I see pay off from promoting at a 1% ad rate, and no change in outcomes, just a gift to eBay , to set any higher ad rate. 

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This isn't accurate, and depends on category.

If we go 1% ad rate, we're get basically nothing. And if you're under the specific rate for your category, you will get almost nothing.

In our categories, if you're under 3-4%, you'll get a fraction of the traffic. A difference of 1% is huge.

And it's definitely not based on peers because you can see who the competitors are, and many of them are companies that we partner with and do not invest more than us.

With that said, we attempted less than 3-4%, and now we're having the same problems as others here: 

You can see the exact date we changed. And you can see that a current setting of 2% is worthless. As I mentioned, if you have your PL below a certain percentage, you'll get the amount of PL impressions we're currently getting. If you have it at or above a certain percentage, you'll get a "normal" amount of impressions.

See the low bar we have now? It'll stay that way at 1, 2, or even 3% depending on category.

See the top bar? It'll stay that way at 3, 4, 5% or more, depending on category.

Higher investment does not bring you above the top bar.

Lower investment does not bring you below the bottom bar.

Based on our results of testing (in our categories, at least) there's effectively 2 levels. "Too low" and "up to par". 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@zamo-zuan @nuclearomen 

I'm not sure there's any hard and fast rule for this. I think a lot depends on what you are selling. If you are selling in a niche with little direct competition, 1% or 2% might be fine. Keep in mind that PLs can show up on a number of pages, usually with other PLs. So, if you have only a few competitors, even if they are using, say, 5% or more, you might make it onto the same page with 1%, because there are only so many PLs for ebay to choose from for that search. But if you sell in a competitive category, or (like me) you sell in a number of different categories, a flat 1% probably won't do much good.

Each seller needs to figure out what works for that seller.  ebay has been pretty clear that for PLs (both PLS and PLA) the rate you choose is not the only factor. But it IS a factor. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@zamo-zuan @nuclearomen 

I'm not sure there's any hard and fast rule for this. I think a lot depends on what you are selling. If you are selling in a niche with little direct competition, 1% or 2% might be fine. Keep in mind that PLs can show up on a number of pages, usually with other PLs. So, if you have only a few competitors, even if they are using, say, 5% or more, you might make it onto the same page with 1%, because there are only so many PLs for ebay to choose from for that search. But if you sell in a competitive category, or (like me) you sell in a number of different categories, a flat 1% probably won't do much good.

Each seller needs to figure out what works for that seller.  ebay has been pretty clear that for PLs (both PLS and PLA) the rate you choose is not the only factor. But it IS a factor. 

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According to our testing, it varies by category. One of our product lines requires 1% higher than another.

While it's true that the numbers of competitors may change things, in our testing the percentage of the competitors does not matter. As mentioned, there only is 2 levels from our results. 

I'll give some examples:

One of our categories basically requires 4% for visibility. If you are 1%, 2%, or 3%, your results will be the exact same. A straight line on the graph with no visible differences. 

If we change to 4%, suddenly we'll be getting "normal" PL results, where PL give about double the impressions you get organically.

Let's say for a test I tried throwing it from 4% to 7%. No difference. You're basically giving them more money for the same results.

This has been the consistent results of testing, in our categories, at least. And it's been that way for around (or maybe even over?) a year now. I first discovered these results when posting on here, and when eBay claimed it was a "test". 

This applies to PLS only. 

Each seller should test themselves, of course, as each category acts differently. If anyone finds similar (or differing) results from their own testing, I'd appreciate it if you shared it here!

[sextons-sweet-deals]

I posted this comments on another post. 

As a seller and buyer, I'm not going to buy the first top listings in my search no matter what the selling price is!

As a buyer, your looking for something specific correct? Your going to do your research, your going to read the listing details, your going to look at all photos posted, and your going to ask questions if needed. 

I feel that I bust my behind listing items. Providing photos, measurements, details, and history / details when applicable. 

I could go on, but enough said.

take care everyone!

[zamo-zuan]

Oh, one more thing. When tested for PLS, the rates of competitors didn't seem to make a difference in our own impressions.

Continuing the above example, we stayed at the 4% level. One of the other sellers who we work with at the top of our category used the option to let eBay control their peer rates. This actually didn't regain all the impressions they lost, even though their rates were higher than ours.

Later on they did a flat rate that they regained their impressions, which is odd, as they were ABOVE these rates when they let eBay set their rates.

Before and after their PL changes, our own PL impressions did not change. Our own performance has consistently only depended on that 1 single factor: what percentage we set our own listings to.

It's why I had mentioned in my thread regarding the subject, their "test" seems to have changed the category in a way that you need to simply invest more money or you get less impressions. Our competitors did not change their rates overnight, the PL system was simply changed where if you do not invest past a certain level you won't get the same amount impressions.

You can literally see which sellers in our category spend 4%+, and which don't. It doesn't matter if our competitors are spending 4% or 5% or 10%. If they switch to investing more, it didn't drop our impressions. If we invest more, it won't gain us more impressions. 

As I've said many times, modern eBay in 2021 is all about pleasing eBay's system. It's not about pleasing customers, and it's not really about out-competiting your competitors. It's figuring out what works in eBay's system.