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
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