Promoted Listings Standard fees are changing ... Again!

[kawartha-ephemera]

Just received some unexpected news via ebay message, have pasted some excerpts below. The emphasis are mine.

What’s changing?

As we continue working to help make your ads more engaging and helpful for buyers, we will be expanding our definition of a click for Standard and Advanced ads to include interactions with new features and functionality of your ads. In addition to when a buyer clicks through to your listing page, we will now include when a buyer clicks on the heart icon to add an item to their watchlist from a Promoted Listing.

We will be expanding what we qualify and report as an Attributed Sale for Promoted Listings Standard to include when a buyer clicks on one of your Standard ads and then purchases any of your Promoted Listings Standard items within 30 days.

These changes, along with our updated Marketing Program Terms, will take effect on March 30, 2023. You can find the updated terms, along with the current terms, on our Marketing Program Terms page.

Seller announcement: Promoted Listings Standard fees are changing - eBay Ads

[femmefan1946]

So if I Promote a listing for a month, then end the PL after 30 days, I will still be charged the PL fee. That's been around for a while.

But now if during that first PL month, someone decides to Watch the listing, and buys six or seven months later, I will now be charged the PL fee. Although it has not been Promoted for months.

Uh huh.

On the other hand, Watchers  watch.  So I doubt this will come up often.

And my PLs  run for months and months anyway.

Still think it's skeezy.

[flipistics]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

Still think it's skeezy.

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You think that's bad, you should read the insulting nonsense eBay wrote on their advertising info page where they try to suggest how beneficial it will be to sellers. I'd rather them just come out and say "If you promote your listings, you pay no matter how the buyer finds you". I mean, we're almost there anyway. The least they could do is just be up front about it.

[electronicifycanada]

First the 2% minimum now they're going to force you to pay for promoted from a buyer who watched months ago. Next they wilI force minimum 5% and they will increase that time to 2 years just wait.

[brettjet38]

Watchers watch...

Buyers, shop...

No big deal...

I run some "continuous" promotions and others are only items recommended by eBay which I run for a few months at a time. One item I sell in 10 is promoted on average...

I flush my watchers every few months by ending and relisting items, they usually come back "watching" and a few take the dive and purchase the item...

I also do not promote items with multiple watchers and as @femmefan1946 said "On the other hand, Watchers watch.  So I doubt this will come up often."...

As for eBay and FEES, this is nothing new it's just eBay seeing how many times they can slice a slice...

If it's getting too hot in the kitchen, maybe it is time for you to set up shop in another neighborhood, but remember the grass is not greener, in fact, you might find it a bit brownish and parched for the lack of Buyers...

[ricarmic]

Yes this was a "sighable" read this morning.

I've mentioned this in other threads but 100% of my 4000+ listings are standard promoted, in a graduating scale by age.

Today about 50% of my sales are "promoted" sales.

It will be interesting to see how the change affects me, theoretically it is going to move me to virtually everything selling incurring promoted fees, or at least it seems that way. About 50% of my sales are to repeat customers and I see regularly they have a combo of non and promoted sales. With this 100% of sales to them will qualify.

I'm percolating my response to this, I have some early thoughts about how I'll change my approach so as not to waste promoted $$$.

An early percolation is that if I change nothing the additional cost will be in the range of 1% (overall against all sales). From a "capatalistic" perspective, the increased promoted costs will drive some people away from using it, which means those still willing to "pay to play" will theoretically get better results.

Just as always experimentation will be required but it will have to be a "patient" exerimentation because results of changes won't be apparent until after 30 days.

I can definitely see examples where the promoted aspect has pulled in buyers to buy more/related stuff because of the promotion, so the risk of saving a small portion of 1% of sales against having the sales in the first place is definitely going to take some math related percolating. 😉 

[kawartha-ephemera]

My best guess is that sellers who have a high proportion of repeat buyers will be the ones most impacted by this change. Logically, those with followers that buy regularly, also view their favourite sellers' listings regularly without buying, chances are good the new attribution terms will be met often when those repeat buyers pull the trigger.

[kawartha-ephemera]

The various ways they've invented over the last few years to generate new revenue have been brilliant.

[femmefan1946]

Then perhaps the strategy for those with repeat buyers is to NOTuse PL for new listings, but only for those that do not find a buyer for six months-- at which time either pull them down and use Sell Similar/PL to relist or just add the PL.

Since I have no great opinion of the importance of Watchers, I'd tend to go for taking them down scenario.

But  it's  a thought exercise at the moment.

[kawartha-ephemera]

With these changes it may not matter whether only the old stuff is promoted, or not to the same degree anyway. Let's imagine a potential buyer is shown one of these old slow selling PL listings, and they're curious enough to have a look with no real interest in buying, but while in that listing they are either shown a few of the seller's non PL "other items" or visit their store. Bingo, they love what they see and snap up 2 or 3 items. Congrats to the seller ... under this new program those would all be PL sales. Fruit of the poisonous tree sort of thing.

[ricarmic]

@femmefan1946 that is exactly the decision I have to make.

I have fortunately set up my "promoted groups" by year (for the last 3 years), of course the newest ones are the "2023" ones, so I can easily pause or stop that promotion so that I'm not paying for new stuff that sells because someone looked at and or bought some old stuff, because the new stuff tends to sell relatively quickly anyway.

However, what if someone sees something old, and then because the newbies are also promoted sees them too and buys them?? I have this fairly often where the old item sells as promoted and the new ones don't, so which came first? They bought the old and were shown the new, or they bought the new and were shown the old?

The conundrum I have is is it better to eat the extra costs of promoting the new stuff as well (which in the grand scheme of things is not really all that much,  a small part of 1% of the total sales) and have all the sales, or risk not having the extra sales the promoted part brings.

Will be pondering this for a while.

[ricarmic]

@kawartha-ephemera that's not how I understand it, ONLY promoted items incur the promoted rate, so if new stuff is NOT promoted, there of course is no promoted fee for the unpromoted items that sell. See this part:  then purchases any of your Promoted Listings Standard items within 30 days.

The problem is that once someone buys one promoted thing, everything else they buy for the next 30 days that is also promoted gets dinged, and again based on the latest date with the 30 day window lasting until 30 days after their last purchase. So in my case a buyer buying once a month is going to cost me promoted fees forever on everything that is promoted, which right now is everything!

Hmm that is making me extra ponder my approach. Time to stop pondering until I'm freshly caffinated again tomorrow!

[flipistics]

I think I'll probably keep my current promoted strategy for the first month, then evaluate what impact it has on my fees and drop my promoted percentage by that amount.  I suspect a lot of people will drop promoted listings entirely, so that may off-set a lower percentage anyway.

[kawartha-ephemera]

@ricarmic
You're absolutely correct, had a brain cramp there. I may have had my own situation in mind, all my listings are PL . In that scenario everything becomes susceptible as I described.

I checked out the actual Terms document which clearly defines PL attribution as of March 30. The relevant section reads:

An "Attributed Sale" means an end user or device associated with an end user (an "End User") has (A) clicked on one of your Cost per Sale Ads and (B) purchased any of your promoted Cost per Sale items within thirty calendar days of that click (the "Attribution Window"). In the case of multi-quantity listings, if multiple items are purchased from the same listing within the Attribution Window, each item purchased will count as a separate Attributed Sale and incur its own fee. eBay will be the final arbiter as to whether or not a sale of an item featured in a listing constitutes an Attributed Sale.

[kawartha-ephemera]

I've been wondering if PL use has dropped recently. Lately, when viewing a listing I'm consistently being shown a row of that seller's other items and sometimes similar listings that are not labelled as sponsored. A year ago it was almost all sponsored stuff being shown.

[femmefan1946]

I suspect the opposite.

That so much is being promoted that eBay knows that sellers will pay more in fees, if they are fairly sure it will lead to sales.

All the sellers complaining that buyers are going for other more expensive items because the complainers are not using PL sort of says that to me.

I've been using Offers to watchers at five times the discount of my PL listings for a couple of months without any noticeable effect. Watchers watch.

But, as others have said, and @recped has charted, PL listings are becoming the larger part of actual sales.

[ricarmic]

I think I'm done pondering, I'm going to pull the promotion from the "newest" items. I've been keeping a closer eye on regular buyers and a LOT of them have a combo of promoted and NOT promoted right now. ALL of them will be getting zapped with promoted fees after the end of March if I don't do that.

I'll start with the very newest items (ie 2023 stuff), if I'm still getting zapped for too high a % via regular buyers, I'll pull it from the "next newest items" (ie 2022 stuff), although I doubt I have to do that, time will tell.

I'll also have to keep an eye on the regular purchasers, as I mentioned earlier I don't know if they found the non promoted item and then the promoted, or the promoted then the not promoted!

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

I suspect the opposite.

That so much is being promoted that eBay knows that sellers will pay more in fees, if they are fairly sure it will lead to sales.

All the sellers complaining that buyers are going for other more expensive items because the complainers are not using PL sort of says that to me.

I've been using Offers to watchers at five times the discount of my PL listings for a couple of months without any noticeable effect. Watchers watch.

But, as others have said, and @recped has charted, PL listings are becoming the larger part of actual sales.

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I'm just wondering what happens when promoted gets to the saturation point. Once everything is promoted what are the odds of your item being the one that shows up on full display.

Old expression.. You can't be first but you could be next. It's almost to the point, where all the  listings are in a giant bin, put your hand in. What you get...always a surprise!!! Promoting does very little to level the playing field. Pretty much the opposite. If everything is promoted the only parties that will win are sellers that can promote at the highest rate and eBay. 

-Lotz

[ricarmic]

The old timers around here will remember there have been many "promotion" styles in the last 20 or so years, featured listings, paying per click etc etc.

Generally they eventually go away and some "new" version shows up. Even promoted listings is morphing into multiple styles of promoted listings now.

Over the course of time I've been lucky as an early adapter of some of the promoted styles, I did VERY well on some, but only for a short time till they caught on generally.

I will say despite it's increasing cost the standard promoted listings have been my best performing one so far over a fairly long time. Eventually that will change and I'll have to adapt again, just like several times before...

[kawartha-ephemera]

Giving the new stuff a chance to sell free of PL sounds reasonable. Everything has been slow going for about a year now, with postcards and photographs I noted ebay granted me close to zero views on non PL items. Perhaps those with long established stores will have fared much better going sans PL.

Another strategy, which I believe ricarmic uses, is to try new stuff at auction with regular BIN pricing. I've had fair luck lately with that strategy, sell a few with 1 bid and every so often have 1 or 2 bid higher. Those not sold are relisted as BIN, another tranche sells over the following few weeks. At that point the leftovers, maybe half of the original auction items, become long-tail inventory. Perhaps that is the point I will choose to add PL to them, I have been adding it immediately upon creating them as BIN ... will likely stop doing that.

I wish we had access to real traffic data, it would be nice to have some insight into how buyers find our listings and store, and what their behaviour is like once there.