@pburn wrote:
I'm going to call in two members who have done extensive research and posting on this subject. If they're around, maybe one or both of them can help shed some light on your situation
Tagging @valueaddedresource and @zamo-zuan.
What's the latest on this from your standpoint?
Thanks for the notification!
@mysecretcy
It's hard to say for sure without seeing the patterns on your graphs, but promoted listings definitely have some changes across the category that could affect your promotions.
Some of us simply have to increase the investment. That's what happened in our own category, we plummeted, and eBay CS said it was a "test" of some sorts. At first I tried changing promoted rates higher and it did nothing. But then a couple weeks later, in further testing, we found out we had to invest at a higher % to receive the amount of impressions we had before.
Although I've talked to some sellers who have tried increasing the rates and it didn't work out for them. So eBay does seem to do some category specific changes, that function differently than other categories.
"I went from having 500-600 daily clicks with the promoted to having 0-10 ..."
In our case, we went from @~250,000 to ~30,000. So the difference can be pretty drastic, although yours does seem to be a higher percentage than ours.
Have you tried messing with the promo rates yet?
One other thing to mention... I do not recommend letting eBay choose the rates! The trending rates have had many documented problems, and to be honest, there's been evidence they are basically falsified (several have posted images of duplicate items having drastically different rates, etc). We've noticed some strangeness on our own, as it claimed trending rates were higher for items when we were the ONLY sellers on eBay that sold the item, and in search, no other sellers were appearing with promoted listings other than us.
It's much safer to set a specific percentage yourself. I've spoke to a couple sellers who had issues when they let eBay set the "trending rates". But when they began manually setting their own rates... Shortly after things returned to normal.
But yeah, if you're comfortable, share a graph and I'll see if there's anything else we could notice. And as always, check to make sure you didn't drop any seller levels, and check in search to see if it seems like you have any penalties on search placement/shipping time.
@krazzykats
Hmm... Looking at the graph posted here, it definitely looks different from the issue we personally experienced, and I don't recall seeing a graph in the exact patterns of the one here.
My biggest question is, what the heck happened in mid Feb to completely break the impressions down like that? I know it was a holiday weekend, but to literally lose thousands/all impressions overnight? That just seems very unnatural.
But from that graph alone, it seems as if things have recovered after that weekend in question. Based on the OP, is it correct to assume the sales themselves never went to normal after that weekend?
One possible bug is when they moved over to the new Shipping system, it's very likely they gave some of us sellers the "Item Not Received" Service Metric penalty when we should NOT have received it. Everyone under 1% is NOT supposed to receive a penalty. But according to eBay CS, it looks like we may have received that penalty when they moved to the new shipping system, despite being under 1%. I can give confirmation on March 1st if we had a penalty or not (as that is when it should expire, according to CS).
So this is one thing to check. Do your listings have a suspiciously long estimate for delivery? If you were hit with the same glitch, it would have happened around the time you're describing.
Other than that, if you're comfortable, could you show some of the other graphs so we could see any patterns? (Number/dollar amounts are not necessary, it'd just help if we could see any trends, changes, or patterns to see if they might indicate anything)
KrazzyKats • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1998
