eBay Promises Sellers Better Exposure Through Ads

[pierrelebel]

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y15/m07/i13/s01

[rose-dee]

This isn't a new concept, I think eBay is just late to the game.  I don't know about other selling venues, but Etsy has been doing something almost identical for quite some time. 

The notion of paying only if a featured item sells seems, on the surface, to be a lot better than the old eBay model where they took your money for special exposure regardless of the result.  

However, this easy (cheap) access may have a negative impact in the long run: the more sellers who take advantage of this programme, the more the effect will get watered down.  What happens if or when the maximum (or near the maximum) proportion of listings is featured?  We might as well go back to everybody getting plain vanilla listings.  After all, listings are advertising.  

So I do see a problem with too many "featured" ads that aren't paid for up front by the seller.  Sooner or later buyers are going to get advertising fatigue and just stop paying attention. 

The quote mentioned concerning what eBay will do with all the data it collects as a result of this test balloon is an important consideration.  Will the end result be higher fees in some categories, or perhaps only for "poor performers"?

[pierrelebel]

"This isn't a new concept, "

No.  eBay has tried it three times already in the last fifteen years.  I participated to all three campaigns. They were based on cost per impressions and/or per hits.  The last one, called AdCommerce, was cancelled a few years ago.  I loved it as it allowed sellers to determine a monthly budget and judge results (added costs to added sales).  For a bit more than $50 a month in added advertising cost, I realized over $1,000 in added sales month after month.  It was well worth it for me.

http://announcements.ebay.com/2008/09/coming-soon-ebay-adcommerce-a-text-advertising-solution-for-se...

then

http://blog.ebay.com/adcommerce-placements-for-on-ebay-promotion-to-be-discontinued-ebaynews/

The new plan is different as it charges an added final value fee if an item sells within 30 days from the advertisement bringing a "click".

When first announced about a month ago eBay invited sellers to leave their name if interested.  I did but have not been invited (yet).  Not sure if the program will be available to American sellers only, or sellers selling on eBay.com only or all sellers.

[treasure.hunter.d]

---

@rose-dee wrote:

The quote mentioned concerning what eBay will do with all the data it collects as a result of this test balloon is an important consideration.  Will the end result be higher fees in some categories, or perhaps only for "poor performers"?

---

Does anyone else smell a "rat" here?

Item views dwindle to almost non-existant and actually non-existant in many cases and all of a sudden Ebay pops up with a way for you to restore views to where they were previous to them dwindling but it's going to cost you! Not to mention, and perhaps I have the understanding of the wording wrong, but if your item sells within 30 days of a "click" then you pay. Well that doesn't seem right to me. If the item sells as a result of a click it's not going to take 30 days it will happen right after the click. 29 days after a click the sale probably has little or nothing to do with said click so why would Ebay think it is still entitled to an extra fee for the sale?

On Etsy there are people who say that the promoted listings have made them money but there are just as many showing stats that indicate the money was thrown down the toilet.

I am signed up for this Promoted Listing Plan as well but have not heard anything regarding my actual participation in it. How will it be decided who gets to play and if not everyone then why? How does Ebay plan on justifying why one person and not the other will be able to participate?

My other concern is that once you start in this and see views on your items going up in number again it's going to be like being a junkie. As more people are involved the benefit will diminish but just like being a long term junkie, who no longer gets the big rush and needs the hit just to maintain, you are going to be scared to death to get off of it lest your business plummet. Yo're "Hooked" Is this the future of Ebay that the only people who get sales are the ones that pay extra for them?

I had seen steady growth month tot month since I started selling on Ebay and then about mid last year, after I really felt that I had gotten everything together and all my "ducks in a row" so to speak, my growth per month increased fairly rapidly until several weeks ago where the bottom completely fell out of sales with absolutley no warning or explanation. I have done nothing negative to badly influence my sales and in fact, am working harder than ever promoting my items on social media, working harder on making sure my listings are the best they can be etc etc, so how on earth have sales gone backwards?

Well sales of course are directly connected to views and it's the views that have dropped to nothing. Google is a big issue but that should have been a gradual drop starting much sooner than this abrupt drop did. Now one really has to question the timing of this Promoted Ad Campaign and the sudden and catastrophic drop in item views.

Dunno, but it all smells a bit fishy to me.

Cheers,

thD

[rose-dee]

---

@treasure.hunter.d wrote:

Does anyone else smell a "rat" here?

Item views dwindle to almost non-existant and actually non-existant in many cases and all of a sudden Ebay pops up with a way for you to restore views to where they were previous to them dwindling but it's going to cost you! 

My other concern is that once you start in this and see views on your items going up in number again it's going to be like being a junkie. As more people are involved the benefit will diminish but just like being a long term junkie, who no longer gets the big rush and needs the hit just to maintain, you are going to be scared to death to get off of it lest your business plummet. Yo're "Hooked" Is this the future of Ebay that the only people who get sales are the ones that pay extra for them?

---

I hadn't thought of it quite in this way, but you make some very good points (with both comments!). 

Yes, if they get people "hooked" on using this service, who is going to want to stop if it means lower sales? Once eBay has a critical mass of sellers signed up and in the revenue stream, what incentive would it have to assist the rest of us (or to drop the programme)?  What good will all the "best practices" do for the rest of sellers then?  

Like you, I've had a sudden and precipitous drop in sales since early June.  I normally have a bit of a slowdown in June/July, but nothing ever before as dramatic as this.  For example, for the first time since selling on eBay years ago, I had nearly 3 weeks in a row without a single sale.  

The trouble is that I can't ascribe it to anything I'm doing (or haven't done).  I have more items listed than ever before, still hanging onto TRS by my fingernails, 100% positive FB, following all eBay's best practice recommendations, more photos than ever before, and more of a variety of items than ever before.  Frankly I'm feeling that if I can't sell well now, with all those apparently helpful factors in my favour, when will I ever be able to thrive on eBay again?  

I'm not a natural "conspiracy theorist", but perhaps you're right that eBay is deliberately putting the pressure on sellers somehow through placement/visibility so that paid ads will look like the only option to choose.

Interestingly, and possibly à propos to this subject, I did a search using a short, generic descriptive phrase today that used to pull up a number of my items, many of which were always near the top of the first page, even on .com.  It apparently doesn't work that way anymore.  I found only one of my items today listed way down the first page under a heading "Other similar items" (or words to that effect), in a sort of sub-section.  

As far as I can recall, this subdividing of listings is fairly new (I'm not referring to international seller listings, which on some sites have always been separate).  It seemed to me that eBay's search engine was filtering out certain items, but exactly how and why, who knows?  All I can say is that if my buyers are seeing all the other similar listings first, it's no wonder my sales are in a slump.  

[recped]

---

@treasure.hunter.d wrote:

Does anyone else smell a "rat" here?

---

I don't!

With eBay separate the amount of revenue they can get from selling ad space becomes more important to the bottom line, It makes sense to sell that space to your existing sellers and keep buyers on the site rather than have third-party competitive ads that take buyers off the site.

[Anonymous]

Great!  It is not ideal for the Deaf and Hard of hearing sellers as we don't use the phone or even have a phone at home.!  We use IP (Internet Phone) to make calls, sometimes very frustrating as the IP operators often have accent and the other end often hang up on us!  So how can eBay helps us??? 

[rose-dee]

---

recped wrote:

With eBay separate the amount of revenue they can get from selling ad space becomes more important to the bottom line, It makes sense to sell that space to your existing sellers and keep buyers on the site rather than have third-party competitive ads that take buyers off the site.

---

Do you really think the 3rd party ads will disappear?  I don't actually.  Why would eBay give up that additional revenue?  With both types of ads (in-house and 3rd party) they'd be able to multiple their advertising income.  I could see eBay deciding to relegate outside ads further down the page, with in-house ads running constantly alongside listings, as on many sites.  Yechh. 

If eBay goes ahead with this it will be overloaded with ads trying to get buyers' attention from every corner because it will be easy and inexpensive for sellers to use.  I think a lot of people must be getting tired of being bombarded with ads everywhere they go online (I know I am).  I already feel that eBay is getting cluttered up and slowed down with ads by everybody and his dog, at seemingly every moment on every page.  I especially hate those "dynamic" ads that clog up my computer's processing time so I can't get to where I really want to go.

A listing is different -- you actually choose to look at an item of interest.  Ads are in your face 24/7, whether you want them or not, or have any interest whatsoever in the product(s).  

Will it make eBay a better place to sell?  A better, more attractive place for buyers?  I don't know, but I can imagine a lot of buyers could get fed up with the constant harassment and look for a "quieter", less chaotic place to shop.  Remains to be seen...

[recped]

Do you really think the 3rd party ads will disappear?

If eBay can sell all that space to sellers they won't need to sell it to outsiders.

Personally I could care less, I spend a lot of time online and I just don't "see" ads anymore. I also read these old things called magazines, they are filled with ads but I barely notice them.

[treasure.hunter.d]

---

@rose-dee wrote:

---

---

Will it make eBay a better place to sell?  A better, more attractive place for buyers?  I don't know, but I can imagine a lot of buyers could get fed up with the constant harassment and look for a "quieter", less chaotic place to shop.  Remains to be seen...

---

I think a lot of people will be angered by the onslaught of "in your face" ads. My wife, who used to buy a fairly significant amount of stuff on Ebay is already down to buying almost nothing because trying to find what you want takes so much extra time now compared to previously. Her exact words "I'm tired of all of this **bleep** I have no interest in clogging up my search results when I'm looking for something and all of this advertising slowing down page loads"

Is ebay going to limit how much any 1 seller can invest into this? There is already a problem with too many "giant" sellers flooding the site with their **bleep**. Theoretically,if one seller invested enough in this program they could flood the site with so much of their own **bleep** that nobody else's stuff will be seen. Let's face it, Ebay is not likely to turn the revenue down so i can see some real abuse of this coming if something is not done.

Just some more thoughts.

Cheers.

[reallynicestamps]

I guess eBay's management have never heard of AdBlock.

And the software guys are not explaining it to them.

I sometimes wonder if the deathknell for TV commercials was the widespread adoption of the remote control. Commercial comes on? Either check out another channel or hit mute.

It hasn't stopped the commercials, but that doesn't mean they are seen.

[gifts_of_elegance]

---

@treasure.hunter.d wrote:

---

@rose-dee wrote:

The quote mentioned concerning what eBay will do with all the data it collects as a result of this test balloon is an important consideration.  Will the end result be higher fees in some categories, or perhaps only for "poor performers"?

---

Does anyone else smell a "rat" here?

Item views dwindle to almost non-existant and actually non-existant in many cases and all of a sudden 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Now that eBay has recognized me as a "great seller" and have raised my limit to $3.5 million, I have been working steady (14/7) to get my inventory listed.  I had two sales in the past 8 days.  One for $30 to Finland and the other for $50 to China from a purchaser with 0 feedback.  She cancelled the second day.

Now, this can't be eBay's doing.  If I don't have any sales, I won't be earning any money for them either.

[rose-dee]

---

@gifts_of_elegance wrote:

Now, this can't be eBay's doing.  If I don't have any sales, I won't be earning any money for them either.

---

Well, one would think so, but who really knows what eBay's plans are?  Over the years I've often realized in retrospect that a major shift in eBay's direction was heralded by a change in sales patterns that seemed completely inexplicable at the time, so I have to wonder what's going on in the background.  

A good example of this was when all my multi-item combined orders suddenly stopped dead -- I thought buyers were losing all interest, but it turned out that eBay had broken* the checkout system so that my U.S. buyers couldn't use it to purchase more than one item from me.  You would think in that instance that eBay might be concerned about the possibility of losing income on all those lost multi-item orders from Canadian sellers, but apparently not: it never has been resolved. 

It is conceivable 'treasurehunter's theory could be right and eBay is somehow "priming" us to jump at the chance to pay for enhanced visibility/advertising because regular listings aren't working like they used to.  

For the reasons mentioned by 'treasurehunter', I'd have an issue with it, but might feel compelled to join in out of a certain desperation not to be left in the dust.  It's a difficult choice actually, because the more sellers who participate, the more overwhelmed with "special" listings the site will become.  

And unless eBay does a good job of restricting the total number of such paid ads at any given time, if they get to be the norm, so that buyers aren't bothering to look at plain old ordinary listings first, what will be the point of the old style listings?  You'll never sell. 

* Well, actually, eBay made so many major changes to it that they finally broke it for Canadian sellers selling to .com buyers.

[gifts_of_elegance]

Something is broken for sure.  I just pulled up my store on another computer.  After showing a few listings, the following came up:

"Sorry, we are having issues with the store.  Please try again later"

[recped]

---

@reallynicestamps wrote:

I guess eBay's management have never heard of AdBlock.

And the software guys are not explaining it to them.

I sometimes wonder if the deathknell for TV commercials was the widespread adoption of the remote control. Commercial comes on? Either check out another channel or hit mute.

It hasn't stopped the commercials, but that doesn't mean they are seen.

---

The remote didn't help but Tivo put the nail in the coffin, streaming via NetFlix etc put a lock on it.

[pierrelebel]

One Seller's Experience with eBay's New Ad Program

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y15/m07/i21/s01

[rose-dee]

Very interesting article, thank you.  It concludes with what I would expect is going to be the inevitable result of a programme like this, and I think the seller has hit the nail on the head: 

Opdyke said he expected exposure and sales to drop as the program opens up to more sellers, leading to higher bid percentages. "Studies have shown in marketplace environments competitors will often accept rising costs to try to persevere," he said. "So in the long run this means smaller margins for sellers, more profits for eBay, and perhaps some rising costs to consumers."

[pierrelebel]

"...It concludes with what I would expect is going to be the inevitable result ..."

Several years ago when eBay was running a similar program AdCommerce, most sellers felt the same way: as more sellers would spend extra money advertising (it was also a bidding process where sellers bidding the highest amount get higher visibility) the program would become inefficient, flogging the site.

As it turns out we were all wrong!

eBay pulled the plug early.  At the time eBay advised sellers "We understand that these AdCommerce ads may have provided an advantage to your business. At the same time we are confident that consistently displaying the most relevant items is in the best interest of buyers, sellers and the eBay marketplace."

This time it is a bit different as eBay controls which sellers get invited.  Time will tell.