eBay

travis7s · ‎06-09-2019

(See attached image) or https://i.redd.it/ldpdbq4jf9331.png

Background: I never really used them before but at the beginning of May I ran a heavy Promoted Listings campaign. Although I never got many clicks or any sales through them my sales were doing better than ever. For the first few weeks the stats were very consistent, around 1000 impressions and a few clicks per day.

Then for some reason the impressions and clicks exploded around May 27 with no real explanation why, and at the same time my sales died almost completely. (June 6 I paused all campaigns) I'm starting to theorize that my listings are being promoted to the wrong crowd, and the click through/sell rate is so bad that eBay search engine is crushing my listings for the buyers that actually want my stuff.

Any thoughts on this?

femmefan1946 · ‎06-09-2019

The idea with Promoted Listings is that you only pay the fee if the Thing sold and you chose the percentage that fee would be .

If your Promoted listings are being shown to the wrong crowd, at a guess that would mean they are in the wrong category.

For example, I have no reason to ever want your engines and mechanical measuring tools (I may be a little vague on what your items actually do) so unless you listed them under Books or Eileen Fisher or Firefly, I would never see them.

Are all your categories correct for the Things being sold?

I did notice that while you will ship internationally, you don't have shipping set up even for Europe. If you use Calculated Shipping, you can set this up for all of Europe or just for the named countries in Custom Location.

But I can't think why eBay would specifically turn off views to an item they will get extra fees for if it is seen and sold.

travis7s · ‎06-09-2019

Catergories are correct. Only a few select items (usually metric tools) I offer to Europe. Note that ebay did not stop the promoted listings views, (I think those would have remained steady at the increased rate) that was me manually shutting them off to see if something would happen.

hlmacdon · ‎06-09-2019

@travis7s wrote:

Then for some reason the impressions and clicks exploded around May 27 with no real explanation why, and at the same time my sales died almost completely. (June 6 I paused all campaigns) I'm starting to theorize that my listings are being promoted to the wrong crowd, and the click through/sell rate is so bad that eBay search engine is crushing my listings for the buyers that actually want my stuff.

Any thoughts on this?

Promoted listings are only as useful as the key words in your item listing title and more importantly the various item specifics. I would review those first to ensure you have the most amount of data possible for every product listed to allow eBay's algorithm to match it to a similar product. Brand/MPN/UPC are obviously the most useful grouping as they allow a 1:1 match (assuming everyone is labelling their product correctly). Tuning that will result in the most relevant impressions. Failing that it will simply extract portions of your listing title and attempt to fuzzy match it to other products. That won't necessarily result in useful impressions. Not all products lend themselves well to promoted listings but the more data you can give ebay the better off you are.

I would put less stock in "de-ranking" in best match from your click to conversion rate. From everything ebay has been signaling they weigh deliverability speed heavily now as they are trying to compete directly with the Prime shipping experience. Make sure you have expedited shipping options available even if you don't think people will use it, ebay's algorithm simply wants to look at a potential buyer/seller pairings and determine which sellers can get the item quickest to the customer and will give those priority assuming nothing else is out of the ordinary (price, terrible seller, etc).

Everything else is just the random ebb and flow of ebay. Ebay has way too much inventory and not nearly enough customers. You can be doing everything right and get terrible results here. I periodically run month long bulk campaigns for promoted listings and those sales are only a lower percentage of overall sales despite having three times the impressions (ie 1.5 million promoted versus 500K normal), with markedly worse click through-rates and no better conversion rates. I haven't found changing the ad rate really improves conversions. I generally view the raw number of impressions as less meaningful as many of them come from product page areas customers rarely interact with. If they have already clicked through to your product page there was a reason for it and they aren't necessarily going down the rabbit hole of sliding carousels.

Try tuning your descriptions, item specifics and shipping options then give it a month to get some data to work with.

femmefan1946 · ‎06-09-2019

@hlmacdon

ebay has been signaling they weigh deliverability speed heavily now as they are trying to compete directly with the Prime shipping experience.

Very good point.

SIL ordered a part for my washing machine from The River and it arrived approximately 36 hours later.

DD followed the video instructions and half an hour later, I had a washing machine that was fully functional.

Since I'm on Vancouver Island, and mail comes on the ferry, I was impressed.

hlmacdon · ‎06-10-2019

@femmefan1946 wrote:
@hlmacdon
ebay has been signaling they weigh deliverability speed heavily now as they are trying to compete directly with the Prime shipping experience.

Very good point.

SIL ordered a part for my washing machine from The River and it arrived approximately 36 hours later.
DD followed the video instructions and half an hour later, I had a washing machine that was fully functional.
Since I'm on Vancouver Island, and mail comes on the ferry, I was impressed.

Funnily enough I had to do that very same thing last year, Canadian service center depot parts pricing being what it is ($150 for a $50 part).

With a certain someone banging on about retail standards constantly you can see the direction this is headed. For a while now they've been piloting a 3PL program partnering Chinese sellers with third party US based 3PLs. That is rolling out into a broader fulfillment program now that the two market leaders are fighting over 1 day delivery. What we will likely see is best match ranking boost and overpromising of delivery time frames via those who opt for fulfillment, so essentially more traffic directed away from the average seller. The carrot will of course be sign up for that and managed payments and we'll cover you when we overpromise and can't deliver because we rely on third party contractors.

Perhaps ebay corporate jets should be used for shifting packages rather than the CEO? Now that would be novel, them putting some actual skin in the game. Until they do it is not going to move the needle. Sellers trust handing over inventory to the market leader because they aren't going anywhere. A random third party 3PL? Good luck if they go under.

insanegrains · ‎06-12-2019

i completely avoid the promoted listings. I like to sort my listings by "price\shipping lowest" and the promoted listings are always out of place, so i just completely avoid them. I want to get an idea of the average prices, and to find the best seller myself.