Promoted Listings Standard - Ad Rate Minimum Increasing (1% to 2%)

[wastingtime101]

Got this e-mail from eBay:

We're continuously evaluating the performance and impact quality of Promoted Listings Standard as a tool to drive seller success. As part of this work, effective July 11, we’ll be changing the minimum ad rate for Promoted Listings Standard from 1% to 2%. While we recognize this impacts your business, this change will ensure your campaigns remain competitive in reaching buyers in our growing marketplace, and also allow us to deliver products and services that drive best-in-class returns for eBay sellers.

Just in the past year, we’ve added new Promoted Listings Standard features like an all-in-one campaign dashboard and downloadable reports that provide sellers with a convenient way to review important campaign data. On July 11, we’ll be rolling out a new feature that’ll allow sellers to edit multiple listings at once for both Bulk and Simple campaigns. This’ll make it quicker to adjust ad rates versus having to make manual changes for each campaign.

And there’s more to come.

Next steps

We’d encourage you to adjust your ad rates that are below 2% on or before July 11 to 2% or higher so that your promoted listings can continue to appear in advertising placements across the eBay network. If you decide not to make any changes, those listings will still be active but won’t be promoted.

[spookyef]

I have now begun ending my listings when they come up for renewal since  I notice EBay has a recurring "bug" whenever you try to edit an item and uncheck the box for promoted listings.  I WILL NOT BE FLEECED by FEEBAY any longer.

[samanthasb0utique]

I'm sorry I have to rant but I have had it with eBay at this point... do they not see that so many sellers have been drowning in the last few months?? All of the website changes killing business, the economy not helping, sellers (including myself) are down 50% in sales, and they think hey! great idea, lets take more money. What do they expect is going to happen??? More money? No... less sellers, less money, closing business, etc. What are you guys doing?!?! I have never wanted to smash my head into a wall more than right now.

[greatstuff80]

I think the idea may be to drive away small sellers in favor of big sellers with big ad budgets. They publicly practically said so months ago that they were looking for more high end luxury sellers. What they have done thus far does not appear to be working. But ebay does not seem to understand that.

[onefootflipper]

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@collectfest wrote:

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@onefootflipper wrote:

I went ahead and fought through the errors that were trying to stop me and have removed promoted listings from all 17,000 of my listings. Somehow I will survive.

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LOL! Hope you could do a bulk change or your hands gotta hurt....!

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Yes, it was bulk, but there were constant failures and glitches and it ended up taking a half hour. Probably a lot of people doing the same thing right now, so those servers might be busy at the moment.

[2013grotz]

Seems like it.  Maybe they're wanting to be a front for wholesalers and warehousers more than small-time sellers.  Course, with all the boneheaded decisions they've made over the years, I wouldn't be surprised if they're just looking to ride ebay into the dustbin and parachute out of the crash.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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The increase to PLS is likely based on two things, 1 PLA's flopped, while being used by really big sellers most smaller sellers don't get a benefit to using Advanced unless they are dealing with large quantities and can offer cheaper prices to compete.  

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I think this is an interesting take.  Just curious, what makes you say it was a flop?  Not doubting it, as it seems like there was a blitz & then I never heard about it again.   I'm heavy into PL's (and at way more than 1% so this won't affect me) but I've never tried PLA's & don't intend to.   I've not gotten the email either, I wonder if it's cause I already promote at way more than 1%.   I'm just curious if you have any evidence as to PLA's flopping or if it's just your opinion?  

[glasser]

This is all part of the bad downward spiral at eBay. If you can't raise revenue by growing--expanding buyers and sellers--you expand revenue by increasing fees on existing customers. This sems to be eBay's approach.

At some point, and an economist could probably work this out, you price yourself out of the market and people stop selling. 

eBay is resting hard on its laurels and the perception of people won't leave because there is nowhere else to go. Eventually, there will be a larger migration away. Sellers will diversify their offerings among platforms and some competitor will arise.

[mybigsale]

Common guys! The higher the rate, the more you make! eBay says it is so. 

While 2% is the new minimum, 100% is still the maximum.

Who is willing to give a 100% Ad Rate a try and report back how much it helped sales?

(I know it's not a laughing matter - but I'd rather laugh then cry)

[visioncreek]

The following thoughts come from the perspective of a casual eBay seller of 21 years.

All of my listings are set to a 1% Promotional Listing fee.  And roughly half of my sales come from these. All eBay has done is lose money from me with this decision. Due to the new change in policy I will no longer be using this marketing tool, so they will no longer be able to collect those fees. I will also not be able to sell as much, so eBay will be missing out on all other general selling fees.

It’s too bad that there is currently no other competitive platform that can offer the same amount of product visibility. As time goes on eBay becomes a less and less seller-friendly service. As with every other similar announcement, I find myself questioning whether it’s still worth it to continue selling.

[ryryjedo]

An absolutely disgusting and despicable move by Ebay. Increasing their profits at the hands of the seller, yet again. This is just after they changed fees on PL's from sales price to total price. It will only get worse with a recession/collapse looming. But that's it for me, no more PL's. They will not get one penny more from me.

I think 15-20 years from now, there will be a two-hour documentary on Netflix explaining how Ebay went out of business and all the bad choices that were made. 

 In the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard: "The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!"

[vontos]

I've found that, in my categories, there are sharply diminishing returns as you go past 1%. This change is going to hurt me pretty badly to the point that I'll probably stop using promoted listings on most of my items and promote them through social media instead.

[frugality_inc]

For those who do not understand eBay's language, I provided a translation for you.

Dear Seller,

We're so incompetent and cannot drive buyers to the website. Since we have millions of clueless sellers who have no idea they're being constantly fleeced, we decided that we should force you to pay even more just to get a fraction of the visibility you had before. We know we recently made it where now the promoted listing standard fee now applies to sales tax that you don't even see, but we wanted to continue to push forward to destroying our core competencies.

Our past few quarterly earnings have been atrocious and we cannot thrive in this kind of environment, even with having reputation as the site you go to for the deal. In order for us to increase the amount of time before the ship sinks, we must make our valued sellers pay even more fees.

We know we have each and every single one of you by the balls and will continue milking every single penny out of you at the cost of providing less value to buyers.

Get back to work slave!

eBay

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Jokes aside, eBay, what the heck are you thinking? Was charging the promoted listing fee on sales tax not enough for you? Even after already profiting in the 9-figure range off of final value fees on sales tax (see their 10-k to calculate this).

I have never seen a more incompetent group of management. eBay, you have absolutely destroyed the value on the platform via promoted listings. Absolutely pay to win system with zero value to buyers.

I have been speaking out against promoted listings since 2019 and have watched not only my business, but other large sellers on eBay get decimated in the past few years due to promoted listings. I once ran a consistent annual 7-figure store on this platform, but now promoted listings make it where the lowest quality sellers can bid their way up to the top of search results and destroy lifetime buyers one by one.

Broken record... I'll continue saying it. eBay will continue dying a slow death until they get back to focusing on the customer experience.

[nuclearomen]

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

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@nuclearomen wrote:

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The increase to PLS is likely based on two things, 1 PLA's flopped, while being used by really big sellers most smaller sellers don't get a benefit to using Advanced unless they are dealing with large quantities and can offer cheaper prices to compete.  

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I think this is an interesting take.  Just curious, what makes you say it was a flop?  Not doubting it, as it seems like there was a blitz & then I never heard about it again.   I'm heavy into PL's (and at way more than 1% so this won't affect me) but I've never tried PLA's & don't intend to.   I've not gotten the email either, I wonder if it's cause I already promote at way more than 1%.   I'm just curious if you have any evidence as to PLA's flopping or if it's just your opinion?  

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it's evident in just the fact that they are raising the minimal elected percentage in PLS to 2% - even though majority of those who use PLS already elect more then 1%-2%. It's evident in your statement: "I've never tried PLA's & don't intend to." - yes, and this will be the statement from 99.9% (if not 100%) of the people who reply here about PLA's. I can tell you why you "never tried PLA's and don't intend to" - because you don't deal in quantity - you sell one off items - pre-owned - in clothing - nothing against that, but category saturated with millions of sellers - on ALL platforms not just ebay. I do sell in quantity, but not enough to use PLA's and make profit, not stocking 100+ of something. PLA's are designed for ebay's large sellers (meaning those who deal in large quantities - not sellers who have lots of feedback and 4,000+ items but only 1 or 2 of each item) and who can afford to budget out money for promotions on those items. I know 2 sellers on ebay that use PLA's but they are record labels (and not small labels, they are longtime very large labels who have their foot in every platform/market possible) can afford to budget an expense for per click listings and whom use PLA's on their own releases (not others). PLS are designed for the smaller sellers (those selling one off or few quantity) where the fee only applies if the item sells on that PL. Thus majority of sellers will be using PLS and not PLA, but ebay rolled out the PLA hoping others would use it also, and possibly some small percentage of small sellers do (with millions of sellers on the platform be hard to say there isn't) but economically, it isn't viable for small sellers to do PLA's unless profit being made far out weighs the cost to do them.

I hear people talk about how they elect ebay's silly suggested rates or more, that's fine, if seller feel they really need to but there is no actual data to support those suggested or higher rates on PLS's generally are justified, via tera peak or any other report. I sell more on 2%-3% then sellers I know electing 15%+ but everything depends on category / item one is peddling. 

[ci1000]

Trying to figure out how I’m going to deal with the new 2% rate.  Currently I promote everything across the board at 1%.  I definitely won’t be doing that anymore.

I have been happy with the return on my 1% investment up until now.  I’ll be continuing with PL but only on products that are in saturated categories.  One of a kind, hard to find items really don’t need PL as long as customers can find it through the search engine.

Which brings me to the next point which is the overall lack of sales, watchers and views since eBay changed everything.  Is it too much to ask that eBay provide us all with better visibility and search-ability for all of the fees they keeping tacking on to everything?

One other thing… I also sell on Etsy and their ad program which is called “offsite ads” puts the eBay money grab to shame.  If you make under $10,000 annually you can opt out of the program. If you make over $10,000 you are automatically signed up for the program for life.  You pay 15% on top of Etsy’s 6.5% fees for ANY item that is clicked on through offsite ads and if that customer buys from you again within 30 days you pay again and the 30 day clock starts over.  You can’t choose what items you want to promote and the fee is always 15%.  Absolutely ridiculous because you never know which item might sell through the offsite ads.

[jb.2]

A 100 % increase.  I think nothing else needs to be said.