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.

[zamo-zuan]

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@glasser wrote:

@zamo-zuan interesting data. I really believe most sellers if the pay attention can get good search results on eBay. I sell using auctions no reserve and my sense is that they get pushed up results even if eBay doesn't particularly favor auctions these days. Of course a lot of items not suitable to auctions.

eBay has exacerbated all of this by its listing policies. There are too many listings that hang around for too long. With some many duplicative listings it makes it harder to find stuff and therefore sellers inclined to pay for people to find their stuff. BIN until canceled with no listing fee is an invitation to an oversaturated market giving consumers to many choices and making it hard to decide. I know this runs contrary to they way most people think, but actually having real listing fees instead of gazillions of free listings would probably clean up a lot of markets. If you owned a bricks and mortar store (and maybe you do 🙂 ), how long would you let you something collect dust before you are like hey we are paying for that shelf space and that's dead wood.

eBay should be spending more money driving buyers and especially new buyers to the site. They should be showing potential buyers the benefits of buying eBay. 

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Well, search used to work in a way where your sales history was the #1 driver of ranking. Meaning if you sold a lot, built repeat customers, and made customers happy, you'd rank up.

Nowadays sales history means almost nothing. They switched to an AI backed search that tries to give all the listings visibility, alongside their PL measurements and certain key variables which are weighed heavily in search at the time. (such as high ASP/average selling price being sometimes favored in search as eBay has admit to in their stock reports)

"eBay should be spending more money driving buyers and especially new buyers to the site."

Their way of focusing on buyers is make the policies favored towards them so they "don't drive buyers away".

At the same time, they focus on bringing new SELLERS by giving sellers below 1-2 years old a "boost" in search results. If you check the data I shared years back, top seller market share was effectively limited, and newer sellers got a boost. You can still see it in search, many of the items appearing with top sellers are sellers with little feedback/not TRS/worse offerings.

There's too much AI, and too many conflicts of interest, for search to work well nowadays. The AI backed search has never targeted well, IS have been a mess and getting messier year after year. And it doesn't change that eBay's search worked BETTER before 2018 when they implemented all of these changes. 

But most important, it is just a shame that sellers can't focus on what's important: the customers. It's not about giving them the best price or service anymore, and if you give sellers a better price or better service, it's often at your own businesses loss. Because eBay doesn't reward you for happy customers, or best prices. They reward you if you give them more money, and figure out what triggers their system to give you good visibility at the time.

This is besides the point that scamming has become associated with eBay's image. Take a look at comments on all of the eBay ad's, and see what the general public really thinks of eBay. 

EBay should be working on their image in the eyes of potential buyers/the public in order to prove eBay as a safe and effective marketplace.

EBay should be working on their cooperation and satisfaction of sellers, as eBay is reliant on the sellers and the sellers are reliant on eBay.

But the sellers have felt very ignored for awhile, and despite claims of better communication, communication is more lacking than ever, and there's nobody at eBay to assist with these types of problems. And in terms of buyers, eBay seems happy with scammers shopping, as it still brings them in some money (at the loss of sellers).

Not to mention, just simple math shows the problem in PL. The less sellers have to spend on promotion/marketing/fees, the lower they can make their prices, and the better CS they can offer customers. Building a market based on paid visibility, means the prices AS A WHOLE go up, making eBay less competitive vs Amazon.

That was eBay's saving grace for years, as while Amazon had a bigger market share, eBay had the CHEAPEST prices. Ever since PL have took over eBay, this is no longer the case. 

Really, what strength does eBay have over other marketplaces? They have established traffic. But giving up that strength of cheapest items really hurts their competitiveness.

[nuclearomen]

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@katzrul15 wrote:

@nuclearomen

And what a disaster that will be! 

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i don't really know cause i don't do auctions (or rarely) but i suspect it will have impact just as with regular PLS listings. The difference will be no "budget" from what I heard it's a flat fee they will charge for it, something like $5 someone said. 

[mr_lincoln]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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@glasser wrote:

@zamo-zuan interesting data. I really believe most sellers if the pay attention can get good search results on eBay. I sell using auctions no reserve and my sense is that they get pushed up results even if eBay doesn't particularly favor auctions these days. Of course a lot of items not suitable to auctions.

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just wait for PLA Auctions ...if not already released...it's coming.

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I agree with @katzrul15 on this potential problem ... disaster is a good term.  I wonder what happens now when two Sellers have the same vintage collectible and one is Selling it Fixed Priced and paying the ridiculous PLA fee and the other Seller is using Auction style ... same price and shipping, the only difference being PLA fee on one for position in Search and the other no fee for position in search.

I have to hand it to eBay, in basic terms under the PLS Sellers ONLY paid a fee if their item sold but like Managed Payments, with PLA eBay now gets their ad fees upfront and here's the kicker, that's whether the item sells or not right?!?   Unbelievable ... I really hope Sellers don't use the PLA feature or at least few use it ...

[nuclearomen]

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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@glasser wrote:

@zamo-zuan interesting data. I really believe most sellers if the pay attention can get good search results on eBay. I sell using auctions no reserve and my sense is that they get pushed up results even if eBay doesn't particularly favor auctions these days. Of course a lot of items not suitable to auctions.

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just wait for PLA Auctions ...if not already released...it's coming.

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I agree with @katzrul15 on this potential problem ... disaster is a good term.  I wonder what happens now when two Sellers have the same vintage collectible and one is Selling it Fixed Priced and paying the ridiculous PLA fee and the other Seller is using Auction style ... same price and shipping, the only difference being PLA fee on one for position in Search and the other no fee for position in search.

I have to hand it to eBay, in basic terms under the PLS Sellers ONLY paid a fee if their item sold but like Managed Payments, with PLA eBay now gets their ad fees upfront and here's the kicker, that's whether the item sells or not right?!?   Unbelievable ... I really hope Sellers don't use the PLA feature or at least few use it ...

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it going to have most impact on those sellers who mostly do auction only listings instead on BIN's, they are the ones will need hear "reports" from to see how it's impacted their auctions

[mr_lincoln]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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@glasser wrote:

@zamo-zuan interesting data. I really believe most sellers if the pay attention can get good search results on eBay. I sell using auctions no reserve and my sense is that they get pushed up results even if eBay doesn't particularly favor auctions these days. Of course a lot of items not suitable to auctions.

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just wait for PLA Auctions ...if not already released...it's coming.

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I agree with @katzrul15 on this potential problem ... disaster is a good term.  I wonder what happens now when two Sellers have the same vintage collectible and one is Selling it Fixed Priced and paying the ridiculous PLA fee and the other Seller is using Auction style ... same price and shipping, the only difference being PLA fee on one for position in Search and the other no fee for position in search.

I have to hand it to eBay, in basic terms under the PLS Sellers ONLY paid a fee if their item sold but like Managed Payments, with PLA eBay now gets their ad fees upfront and here's the kicker, that's whether the item sells or not right?!?   Unbelievable ... I really hope Sellers don't use the PLA feature or at least few use it ...

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it going to have most impact on those sellers who mostly do auction only listings instead on BIN's, they are the ones will need hear "reports" from to see how it's impacted their auctions

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As we have discussed @nuclearomen , I have been seeing a fall off on sales the last three weeks during normally higher sales times ( mainly weekends) ... I use Auctions on about 15% to 20% of my items.  I just don't think the items are coming up in search to be honest ...

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

mr lincoln, ebay has basically said this tool (unlike PLStandard) is NOT designed for sellers like us. If small sellers of used one offs use PLA, it is because they did not take the time to understand that this is NOT a tool that fits their business model. NO seller should find that out the hard way, but undoubtedly, many will ,because there are a lot of ebay sellers who never take the time to analyze new tools and policies. 

This is a tool, like the multi user account tool, that is very useful for the right business model, but of no use for most of us here. 

[nuclearomen]

@mr_lincoln as i don't do auctions I can only speak on BIN's and sales for me past few weeks. Weekend sales when is usually the higher sale times have been slop, this weekend was the worst yet, 2 sales, then did 4 sales today + 1 on mercari. As experiment I upped some of my PLS election rates by 1% just see what happens, some of those were already at 2% and now 3% - but seen some items with 1% has gained several watchers in past 2 days so i highly doubt it's issue of being seen, it's the rarity and interest demand. 

[katzrul15]

@nuclearomen 

@mr_lincoln 

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques 

But it is not being marketed that way.  There is a HUGE banner atop my Seller Hub telling me to try it out, take it for a test spin!

e-Bay is marketing it to the average Seller and that is wrong.

[mr_lincoln]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

mr lincoln, ebay has basically said this tool (unlike PLStandard) is NOT designed for sellers like us. If small sellers of used one offs use PLA, it is because they did not take the time to understand that this is NOT a tool that fits their business model. NO seller should find that out the hard way, but undoubtedly, many will ,because there are a lot of ebay sellers who never take the time to analyze new tools and policies. 

This is a tool, like the multi user account tool, that is very useful for the right business model, but of no use for most of us here. 

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques   Was there a list of specific categories the PLA applies to?  If so I missed it ...

[mr_lincoln]

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@katzrul15 wrote:

@nuclearomen 

@mr_lincoln 

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques 

But it is not being marketed that way.  There is a HUGE banner atop my Seller Hub telling me to try it out, take it for a test spin!

e-Bay is marketing it to the average Seller and that is wrong.

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I see the same thing ... if it is NOT intended for the cats I am in then I should NOT be seeing that announcement ... its not a message to read about it, it's clear they want Sellers to use it ... so when Sellers blow their "budget" the first week and have nothing to show for it we'll start to see the complaint threads ...

I "get" what it is about ...

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@katzrul15 

"But it is not being marketed that way.  There is a HUGE banner atop my Seller Hub telling me to try it out, take it for a test spin!"

RIGHT! And, the MECHANICS of creating a PLA campaign is not very different from setting up a coded coupon campaign, for example. Which can easily mislead someone into thinking that it's a simple tool. But while it's easy enough to create a campaign, it's not easy to create an EFFECTIVE, PROFITABLE campaign. 

So, ebay is marketing it as easy to use, get the top slot, blah, blah....

To which I've been saying: This whole thing should come with a disclaimer of some sort. In fact, I'll go further, not only should it have a disclaimer, it really should REQUIRE that any seller who wants to use it MUST first "attend" the "Ads Academy" ebay provides, and ebay should have a test at the end that a seller must pass in order to start a campaign. But OK, that's never going to happen. LOL But maybe something like : Use only as directed. This tool might not be for you. Side effects can include loss of money. LOL Whatever.

BUT.....at the same time....I will say what I always say when new tools are introduced. Each seller has a responsibility to his business to fully understand the tool before either using it or dismissing it out of hand. When this first went live I spent hours examining it (as did others here) and I waded through the Ads Academy. I concluded (even before I saw the ebay quote) that this was NOT designed for sellers like me. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. Not every tool is useful for every seller. The multi-user account tool is something larger sellers had wanted for years because they have employees etc. I'm a one person store. So that particular tool isn't for me, but I can see its value for others. Same with this. I've already seen some sellers on Facebook groups who are very happy with it, who are making money from it, but they have all been sellers who fit the definition of who this was designed for. 

So, no, ebay should NOT be promoting this without some kind of disclaimer. But also, NO seller should use this tool without first fully understanding it. Sadly, as this Board proves over and over again, a lot of sellers will NOT take the time to understand it, and as a result, they will likely lose money. 

So, I'll post his again (I know I posted this on the Board before), but here is a direct quote from ebay management (and I'll include a link to the source, which is ebay's corporate blog). Maybe this quote should be at the top of the page along with the invitation to use the tool:  "Promoted Listings AdvancedBETA is best suited for:

larger sellers,

sellers with higher-priced inventory where a CPC model may be more cost effective than Promoted Listings Standard,

and sellers who are already running this advertising model on other marketplaces."

I would add to that first one "larger sellers with multi-quantity listings"

Source of quote: https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/better-business-with-ebay-ads-promoted-listings-advanced-beta-i...

My opinion: PLA is NOT a bad tool. This is something SOME sellers have indeed been asking for, and some sellers will indeed profit from. But it isn't designed for most of us who post here. If we want to use PLs, most of us should stick with PLS, and avoid this tool.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@mr_lincoln 

It isn't really about categories per se. If you read my post above, I provide the quote from ebay.  My own analysis of the tool convinced me that this is really not for sellers (especially smaller sellers) of one-offs (especially used or vintage one offs).  So, let's talk electronics. If you sell popular, new electronics, with multi quantity listings, gaining that top spot on the search page might very well help you compete. And because it's a multi-quantity listing , the cost of the clicks is spread out (ideally) across multiple sales from that one listing. BUT...if you primarily sell used/vintage electronics, and all your listings are one offs, even  your best case scenario is that , if you get the top slot, you will sell the ONE item in that listing, so ALL the clicks are cutting into your ONE sale. 

I suppose even a one off seller could benefit from this, IF he did a great job of using his top slot item to send buyers to his other listings, and made sales that way. But I wouldn't want to spend much money testing that theory LOL

ALSO, keep in mind that many used/vintage items are uncommon enough that they will likely show up on the first page of search results organically. And many are long tail items, sold by sellers who have long subscribed to the theory "list it and forget it" because " it'll sell, but it  just needs the right person to come along." So, while the top spot is very valuable real estate for most multi-quantity sellers , it is not nearly so valuable for long tail one offs. 

When the original PL was first announced, (as I remember) it was limited to placement on the search page, and I felt with my long tail one-offs, my stuff was usually on the first page (at least if the search term was fairly narrow) just because there aren't tons of the item listed. So I didn't feel there was a real compelling reason to use it. It was only when ebay started adding PLs to OTHER pages that I realized PL was useful for me. Especially when it became clear that ebay was often showing my item to someone who hadn't actually searched for that specific item, but ebay's algo had decided the particular buyer might be interested in my item anyway. I suspect most of my PL sales are from those pages (not the search results page) and most are basically what I think of as "impulse" buys...so PLS has value for me. Paying to get the top slot on the search page? With my stuff, frankly, I don't care about the top slot on the search page. 

So, for me, PLS provides the sort of placement I benefit from with no up front cost to me. PLA provides placement I don't really care about at what could be considerable up front cost to me. I'll stick with PLS.

[meme6253]

I promote my listings, & that I feel is enough, This new process could be extremely costly for a seller, You could actually wind up having to owe more than your item is worth & still not sell it!, Very Risky Gamble!, Great for Vegas!

[glasser]

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@nuclearomen

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just wait for PLA Auctions ...if not already released...it's coming.

Wow that's going to be a nightmare.  In categories I sell in people favor overpricing items to auctions 🙂 

That said, eBay would have to, and I think they should for all PL as well item specifics, show some data that proves the investment is it worth it. I have an auction know with 550 views, 49 watchers, and 27 bids. Doesn't see, PL  would provide any benefit.  And I understand the new category realignments search will be come even more important. I assume 98% of people find my listings via search. Not sure increased paid click throughs by drive by window shoppers would help my bottom line.

[valueaddedresource]

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@glasser wrote:

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@nuclearomen

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just wait for PLA Auctions ...if not already released...it's coming.

Wow that's going to be a nightmare.  In categories I sell in people favor overpricing items to auctions 🙂 

That said, eBay would have to, and I think they should for all PL as well item specifics, show some data that proves the investment is it worth it. I have an auction know with 550 views, 49 watchers, and 27 bids. Doesn't see, PL  would provide any benefit.  And I understand the new category realignments search will be come even more important. I assume 98% of people find my listings via search. Not sure increased paid click throughs by drive by window shoppers would help my bottom line.

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@glasser  @nuclearomen  PL Express for Auctions is already active for some sellers (in the mobile app and only for sellers who don't use Seller Hub).

The really interesting thing for PL Express for auctions is it's not even pay per click, it's literally just an upfront flat tiered fee for the promise of maybe having your listings shown in ad spaces across the eBay network. 😲

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Promoted-Listings-Express-For-Auctions/td-p/32299373

So it goes like this - Promoted Listings Standard you pay only if you make a sale, Promoted Listings Advanced you pay for clicks but at least there is still some action required that might possibly lead to a sale, Promoted Listings Express you pay upfront just for visibility alone, no action on the part of potential buyers needed.

It will be interesting to hear what sellers think of PLExpress once it is rolled out fully.  It's not clear exactly what the fees are - apparently the option to promote is offered only after you create the listing and then it is a flat fee based on category and length of auction. There is no publicly available chart of what the fee tiers look like, you just have to wait and see what it shows you in the app when it gives you the option to promote.