Locked
Discussion interactions are currently paused.
6 month review of promoted listings testing
Summary: hlmacdon shared an extensive review of their six-month experience with eBay's promoted listings, noting that increasing ad rates did not necessarily correlate with more sales, but promoted listings did help acquire new semi-regular customers and generate multiple attached sales. lotzofuniquegoodies shared their own findings, suggesting that promoted listings work best with unique or in-demand items. They also highlighted the issue of offshore sellers exploiting listings for visibility. globalwholesale_24 sought advice as a new seller interested in using promoted listings, receiving practical advice from mrdutch1001 and byto253 on pricing strategy and building seller feedback. reallynicestamps reminded participants that the thread was outdated, suggesting newer insights might be more relevant. Finally, kh-syedse closed the thread due to its age, inviting participants to start a new discussion.
I thought I would share my results over a longer time sample. During this time I tested some products with a higher ad rate but consistently found that sales did not scale with increased ad rates in any meaningful way, the vast majority of sales were at the minimum spend. Some other observations:
- Ebay's reporting doesn't fully capture the benefits of promoted listings. Specifically I've noticed two consistent trends. Most new customers I have acquired over the period are via promoted listings, and many of them convert to semi-regular buyers. More importantly a large percentage of promoted listing sales have generated multiple attach sales and have proven to be a good way of generating store browsing which leads to more sales activity. Ebay's reporting fails to capture either of these two metrics and they would be wise to incorporate them into the dashboard to give sellers a better overall picture of the ROI. I don't have an easy way to measure this given ebay's reporting, but anecdotally I'd say at least 30% if not more have multiple items purchased stemming from the initial promoted listings sale.
- Conversion rates don't seem to increase with promoted listings when viewed in aggregate. It takes many, many impressions to generate a click and even then the sell through rate is fairly equivalent to normal traffic. It is really about generating enough impressions.
- While many new customers are being acquired I do see a large amount of regular customers showing up as promoted listing sales. To me this indicates that while they are regular shoppers (I have a number of buyers that purchase multiple times a week) their browsing activity still remains via the search engine rather than natural browsing of favorite seller store sto see what is new. Considering that I'd say promoted listings are important to help you stay at the forefront of the buying activity of even your most regular customers.
- There has been an ongoing war between ebay and some of the ad blocking programs over promoted listings. Ebay has changed the code that inserts promoted listings on several occasions to counter this. Some have worried that due to the popularity of ad blocking programs there is a danger of losing sales. I have no way to measure that to conclude one way or another but comparing the last 6 months of 2019 to the year prior I finished up YOY with about 20% less inventory. In the first 6 months of the year without any consistent promoted listing activity I had some really wild up and down swings and I would say consistent promoted listing activity has helped minimize the downward swing.
Overall I'm happy with the results I have been seeing. For a very minimal cost there have been appreciable benefits and a positive ROI. I expect results to change come next quarter as the US side has confirmed they will be making changes to how promoted listings work as there are a lot of low quality sellers ranking high in search by leveraging the program. While there is always going to be some lingering doubt as to whether or not one would have received the same sale had the listing not been promoted, the marketing costs can be very low while still giving a nice monthly boost to sales.
The sales below are in USD. A monthly breakdown is as follows:
- June - $421.18
- July - $622.47
- August - $1280.98
- September - $1017.24
- October - $1474.42
- November - $883.43
- December - $1425.02
kh-syedse
·2 years agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
reallynicestamps
·2 years agoZOMBIE THREAD FROM 2020
The problem with zombie threads is that the information and advice may be so out of date as to be useless.
PL has now had four years to shake out and can be a useful option in crowded categories, and it does seem to draw more Views, but I can see no higher sales on PL listings than I do on non-promoted listings.
The extra Views do seem to draw in customers, but they don't necessarily buy the PL items.
And there is no reason I can see to opt for more than the 2% minimum fee.
EBay is not your friend - eBay is your landlord.
hlmacdon
OP6 years agoAs an illustration of the above, in the time it took to write the above post I had two sales come in. One of those sales had a promoted listing sale which included a further $70 of attached sales.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·6 years agoThanks for your sharing your findings @hlmacdon . Most informative. In limited testing I've had 4 sales to date with promoted listings. One item sell on a fairly regular basis. The other 3 were more of the "unique" variety. 2 items were multiple unit listings with multiple items purchased at the same time. In searching with Google items similar often will not display as being too old on a regular basis. From my eye, promoted seems to work best with either extremely unique or high in demand items. I rarely have repeat customers. As stated in most advertising...Results may vary.
-Lotz
PS. Do you sell in 1 product line or various?
hlmacdon
OP6 years agoI sell in a couple of related subcategories within the same overall category. I wouldn't describe the products as rare or unique, but they are the sort of products that you would typically be searching for with specific terms rather than browsing a general category. The key with promoted listings is to run them for a longer period. It's a bit like trawling the ocean for fish when you don't know where to cast your net. Unless you have high demand items the only thing that is going to deliver results is consistency.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·6 years agoA good percentage of the Promoted listing searches routinely turn out to be of the offshore variety. They can afford to promote because of the volume of listings they are generally are running(volume purchasing power) and access to cheaper shipping. I also run across listings that state the item is located somewhere in a country called "Canada". Click on the listings, turns out it actually ships from China. In technical terms...A workaround.
-Lotz
globalwholesale_24
·2 years agoHi,
I want to know whether through a promoted listing we would be able to fetch more sales or not. I am new to eBay and want to know about sales leads. Kindly help me to find that out.
Thanks,
Dream.
mrdutch1001
·2 years agoas a new seller listing high value items, there is much to learn about listing and selling on eBay...
so be sure you have read everything about how to be a seller and all the rules, policies and fees that you will be charged on any items that may sell >know & understand how fees are calculated...
You need selling experience and you need feedback...some of which "could" be accomplished by listing some low value items or making some purchases of low value items just to build up that feedback.
Successful selling requires this thing called P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E!
Successful selling is also about the product>its uniqueness, quality, price points, target market, supply & demand.(If there is an over abundance of supply and no demand, sales will be fewer)
Know what you sell, sell what you know...
Keep in mind that potential buyers may be very skeptical of purchasing from a new 0 feedback seller listing very high value items..
as a new seller, using Promoted Listings may be of no value to you at this point....
byto253
·2 years agoeBay buyers, perhaps more than others, are price sensitive. Before listing anything, I check the price of SOLD items, and shipping, to get a good idea of what the going rate on eBay is. I also look at the number of sold items compared to the number listed to get a feel for the sell through rate. Just looking at items for sale is not very good as it often has a lot of overpriced items that are not selling.
You can check sold prices with a regular search, and go back up to 3 years by checking at Terapeak - link below:
https://www.ebay.ca/sh/research?marketplace=EBAY-CA&tabName=SOLD
If you are above the eBay selling price it will not matter much if you promote or not, as the item is overpriced for eBay. Items are often cheaper on eBay than other outlets. If you can't turn a reasonable dollar at the eBay market price, then it is just not a good item for eBay - not everything is.
Regarding the zero feedback, I suggest any new seller buy some low value items like cotton swabs or elastics, whatever, and get the feedback to at least 10. Large sellers of low priced items pretty well have automated feedback so getting it is not difficult.