Promoted Listings Dynamic Rate Minimum Now 5% - Check Your General Campaigns!

[valueaddedresource]

Apparently eBay has decided to react to investor concerns about weak Q4 revenue guidance by quietly ratcheting up the minimum for Promoted Listings General Dynamic Ads to 5%. 😡

Still shows a minimum of 2% for fixed rate

But the Dynamic ad rate cap is now a minimum of 5%

Not sure how that is impacting existing campaigns with a cap below 5% but my guess is those ads just may not be delivering at this time. I'd suggest checking your campaigns and ad reports if you have it set below 5% to see if/when performance may have been impacted.

I also suspect it's not a coincidence we are seeing more and more reports around here of those suggested rates ramping up, sometimes over 20%.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/eBay-s-not-shy/m-p/34762314/highlight/true#M2481231

devon@ebay  kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay  - can you find out more information on this for us please, like when it started and why sellers weren't proactively informed? Or on the extremely off chance it's a glitch and not an intentional change, please report it to the appropriate teams. Thanks!

[valueaddedresource]

devon@ebay  kyle@ebay  elizabeth@ebay  adsteam@ebay  - any info on this change that you can share?

[devon@ebay]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

devon@ebay  kyle@ebay  elizabeth@ebay  adsteam@ebay  - any info on this change that you can share?

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Hey @valueaddedresource! We have reached out to see if there any insight that we can share and if we hear back we will be sure to share. 

[valueaddedresource]

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devon@ebay wrote:

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

devon@ebay  kyle@ebay  elizabeth@ebay  adsteam@ebay  - any info on this change that you can share?

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Hey @valueaddedresource! We have reached out to see if there any insight that we can share and if we hear back we will be sure to share. 

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Thanks devon@ebay !

[tradewindsfolkart]

And the most disturbing part is, that although I participate in all of the ad campaigns and was running any where from fixed 2% to dynamic with 2  to 4% caps and even dabbled in CPC, with decent exposure, the only items I EVER did or will promote at 5% plus 12.5% final value fees plus store fees, plus all these fees on my very heavy DIM ship items and tax, would be items I want to clear because they might be a poor performer.  And  that is exactly what is now rising to the top of the eBay main page... junk that people are trying to clear out and willing to forfeit approx 20-40% of their margin to get rid of.  This is NOT a good model to attract new buyers to eBay.   If I was a brand new buyer on eBay.. I would click off in one minute after viewing the first garage sale page of many, many junk promoted clearance items placed on top of some relevent good ones. The first page of competitors such as Etsy, Wayfair and Amazon, for now, have far more vibrant and relevant first page results.  And most small sellers NEVER will or can afford to pay a minimum of $5/day to get on Google or other offsite ad spots.  I feel that the LEAST eBay can do is advertise for some small business sellers on Google based solely on our 12.5% final value fees and store fees and our own listing quality, SEO and click through rate.  After all, we spend countless hours on SEO for that purpose and eBay's benefit and we are rewarded as sellers with barely a drop of offsite visibility unless we pay even more for offsite ad campaigns. Maybe a new business model such as this for "small sellers" would attract back all the sellers that have left (and thus new deal seeking buyers as well to increase GMV).  Or how about.. if we are not going to abandon the ad models, if you buy a store subscription, 100% of the subscription fee gets credited to your offsite ad budget, and for every offsite sale you land, 1% of your final value fee gets credited back to your offsite ad buget.  After all, your great SEO brought that buyer to eBay.  That would entice offsite participation.   Amazing how eBay functioned as the leader for 30 years before any ad campaigns at all.  Small sellers under $100k sales ABSOLUTELY DO NOT HAVE AN AD BUDGET that can compete with Temu offsite.  Ebay must understand this as they are driving their sellers right off their platform to try to save their margins on platforms like Shopify, Mercari, and eBay UK now and many more that will pop up that are happy with a business model that collects solely store fees and payment processing fees, or pushes those fees to a buyer consumption model.  But one thing FOR SURE we sellers cannot do is raise prices any higher to cover  all these fees and campaigns.  The buyer is tapped out!  Do we have to wait for a retail apocalyptic crash to prove it?  or wait...that is already happening.

[robbie31415]

@valueaddedresource 

Hey not sure when this change happened, but since it's related to the advertising sector, Priority campaigns now have a 0.20 minimum CPC, up from 0.02.

This probably got mentioned before lol, but I just noticed it at least.

[fbusoni]

@valueaddedresource 

Nothing like a little holiday cheer from eBay.

Can you imagine what would happen to eBay's revenue stream if every single seller boycotted the company's "promoted listing" software -- which seems to not produce the desired results most of the time anyway?

[valueaddedresource]

@robbie31415 I hadn't heard about that, thanks for sharing! Out of curiosity does anyone know what the previous minimum for Store Display ads was? It looks like that is at $0.20 per click now too.

[robbie31415]

@valueaddedresource 

Store ads were always 0.20 I believe.

Made more sense. Becsuse it's advertising basically an entire category.

Now they brought all CPC with Priority campaigns up to .20.

[meme6253]

They need to stop passing their short comings onto sellers, At some point we will not be able to keep passing these increases onto the customer & then what!

[continentalcollectibles]

This should be Posted to ever Seller complaining why their Sales have Stopped or dramatically slowed down, We did experiment with Paying the higher commission and Our sales Rocketed into the stratosphere, unfortunately we were paying to sell our items. the only one making money was eBay. Drop the Commission down to where you're breaking even, and You don't Sell anything.

And Sadley in our opinion this will not stop until you make eBay your partner, the Ultimate Goal is 50 percent for You and 50 percent for eBay. 

and out of this YOU pay for your ITEMS, YOU pay for all your Returns, YOU pay for your employees and Help, YOU pay for all your utilities, Phone Internet, Insurance, Rent, more. It doesn't work. You will make more money flipping hamburgers or Greeting People at Walmart.

In eBays defense If it was our company I would also want to make as much as we could for our investors and of course the Directors of eBay. Unfortunately  every day these Boards are full of Sellers Complaining that they have no sales and there are the normal replies, Alot of other options for Buyers Now Etsy, Amazon, The Economy, your items are flooded in the market, Its Summer, Its Winter, Its Spring, its Fall, Santa Broke his sled, And While Some of this is True and Not all eBays Fault. They need to hire someone that's actually been selling on here and can Give them a Real analytical explanation about if only eBay makes Money sooner or later no one will be selling on here but eBay themselves.

But what do we know this is only our Opinion, We will Continue Selling on here Making eBay money, and trying to make a little for us and employee a few people, been doing it since 1997 or 1998 under a few companies, Saw the Good Times and Now the Bad. Hopefully the Sales Pickup and eBay decides to leave some of the money in our account instead of theirs, Sorry for the Rant

[mcdougle4248]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

@robbie31415 I hadn't heard about that, thanks for sharing! Out of curiosity does anyone know what the previous minimum for Store Display ads was? It looks like that is at $0.20 per click now too.

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I stopped using Store ads at the end of July, and yes the minimum bid per click was $0.20 back then.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource 

No, I hadn't heard about that either. Odd, because I did attend the Seller Check In, but I heard nothing about either change to these minimums...and it sure seems like an update they would have wanted to share with us, ....you know, to keep us informed and all that transparency stuff.

[mcdougle4248]

@valueaddedresource 

There is something wonky going on with my Dynamic campaign. I first noticed it a few days ago.

I have my Dynamic campaign set with a 12% ad rate cap + a 2% ad rate modifier. The listing I highlighted in the screenshot below has a 3.6% suggested rate for today. So, if the 2% ad rate modifier was applied correctly today's ad rate should be 5.6%, not 12%. I am not sure if this is a display issue as the listings that show up incorrectly are not the same listings every day. 

[valueaddedresource]

Ok so I've confirmed that for Priority campaigns that use the Smart Targeting option which allows eBay to automate aspects of the campaign, the Maximum CPC rate cap setting now requires a minimum of $0.20 per click.

Priority Campaigns that use Manual Targeting with Fixed Bidding now show a minimum of $0.10, while also daring to suggest there exists a reality in which someone might want to pay as much as $100 per click on their ads.

As of today, eBay's policy page for Promoted Listings Priority Cost Per Click ads still shows the minimum at $0.02.

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/ebay-advertising/promoted-listings/priority-campaign-strategy?id=5... 

I tried to get clarity on the Promoted General Dynamic changes in the Optimize Your Listings With Ads breakout sessions during yesterday's Winter Seller Check-In event, but my question in the Q&A section was not answered.

devon@ebay  kyle@ebay  elizabeth@ebay  adsteam@ebay  - it is absolutely egregious and unconscionable that eBay would make these changes and jack these rates up during critical Q4 shopping season with no announcement to sellers.

I would highly recommend you escalate this to the highest levels of the legal, compliance and ethics departments within your company immediately - that would be VP GM Global Ads Alex Kazim, Chief Legal Officer Samantha Wellington, Chief Risk & Compliance Officer Ryan Jones and Chief Ethics Officer Aaron Johnson.

As for sellers who use any of these eBay ad products - The FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection has recently begun enforcing rules about hidden junk fees, in addition to other bad business practices, and been doling out multi-million dollar settlements in the process.....I'll just leave these links here.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/11/ftc-sends-more-17-million-consumers-harm...

https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/ 

[valueaddedresource]

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@mcdougle4248 wrote:

@valueaddedresource 

There is something wonky going on with my Dynamic campaign. I first noticed it a few days ago.

I have my Dynamic campaign set with a 12% ad rate cap + a 2% ad rate modifier. The listing I highlighted in the screenshot below has a 3.6% suggested rate for today. So, if the 2% ad rate modifier was applied correctly today's ad rate should be 5.6%, not 12%. I am not sure if this is a display issue as the listings that show up incorrectly are not the same listings every day. 

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@mcdougle4248  wow, I really hope that is just a display issue, but either way that is....not right.

Please let me know if you see that wonkiness extend to what you actually end up getting charged in ad fees.