Taking experimental plunge with "Promoted Listings Express"

[ricarmic]

Notice recently that us old time desktop/laptop users can now utilize this as well!

So today started experimenting with it for two auctions.

Started one on .COM (cost $1.99) and one on .CA (cost $4.99)

I can see where I got charged the fee, but I can't see anywhere else where I can see them/track their progress. If I look on myEbay in the promoted listings column it says "Not eligible to promote" just as always for auctions and same as the others.

As a test, I searched for a high level word in the title, 88,537 items came back and mine is #17 which is pretty darned good. That item is quite aways ahead of the others running in terms of views. This leads me to believe it is actually being promoted which is good.

As a note, I started two lots one double the size of the other the larger is the one promoted. The smaller one I gave up looking for on the search return list so it is somewhere much farther down in the list, so it does look like the promotion is moving the item a long ways up the search return list.

Interested to know if anyone else has experimented yet and if so what you saw as results and for sure if you know how to see these in any form of reporting on myebay or elsewhere?

[kawartha-ephemera]

It will be most interesting to read how this experiment turns out.

[recped]

Finding your listing at #17 unless it actually was marked "sponsored" is just where it naturally ends up in Best Match.

The fee you are paying is to get you a "sponsored" placement in addition to the regular organic listing displayed in search. It will also get you many more placements on other seller's listing pages and in the various sidebars and marketing messages.

I don't think it will do anything for your natural Best Match placement other than as a side effects of views, watchers and bidding action that may increase due to the sponsored impressions.

[ricarmic]

Today's  update.

The .CA item was a scheduled item. I notice sometimes it mentioned that scheduled items can't be promoted, sometimes it didn't. It allowed me to when I created this one, but at any rate I was never charged the fee, so it looks like the .CA one hasn't been upgraded/promoted. As I mentioned with the .COM one, I don't see anywere where one can identify these once they are running.

Regarding the .COM item, sadly I do not remember if it said promoted or not when it came up as #17. This morning I used the same query and it does not show up anywhere near the top, I stopped looking after 500 items so it appears it was not a promoted response last night. I ran a more constricted search and the promoted item shows up actually after the smaller one and doesn't show as promoted. I ran an extremely constricted search and it only shows up as normal, there weren't any sponsored results at all from me or anyone else. The listing views this morning are only a bit higher than normal, double the unpromoted one.

[kawartha-ephemera]

I'm having a grand ole time with this.

After checking out your list of most recent auctions I took note of the pair most likely to be the listings in play. After signing out I ran a search using 2 rather common terms that were present in both of the listings' titles. This returned a very high number of results with no sign of your auctions immediately apparent, so I filtered for auctions only which narrowed the field but it was still not sufficient. After filtering for newly listed and price over $19 the list shrunk to 892 listings. Among those, I found your highest priced lot 90 slots from the top and the lower priced one at number 92.

When I viewed the higher priced auction, the lower priced auction did NOT appear in either of the similar sponsored lists shown above the description.
However, when I viewed the lower priced auction, the higher priced auction DID appear in the similar sponsored list but did not appear in similar sponsored listings from the same seller.

Notes:
a. I used my cell phone for this search but I forced it to view everything in "classic" desktop mode.
b. Interestingly, there was not a single listing identified as being sponsored among the hundred listings shown on page one, yet there definitely was at least one that I know of.

I'm going to guess that bid notifications will be one location where this type of sponsored stuff is likely to appear.

[ricarmic]

@kawartha-ephemera 

This is very interesting information!  (I am sure you are looking at the two correct lots)

Views on the larger sized lot are still running double those for the smaller lot.

This morning I came up with a better title wording for the .CA lot that was supposed to be promoted as well. When I went to revise it, the $4.99 promoted option was back again. I didn't turn it on. I did remember that I also made a title wording change whilst the item was scheduled and the promoted aspect wasn't visible, I assumed at the time it was because it was already invoked but it is possible that is what killed it from happening last night.

For this experimental round, I'm going to stick with the .COM one only till I have more experience with how these things work. (Funnily enough the .CA lot has 50% more views than the promoted .COM one!) If time allows I may call my CSR folks to find out where one can actually see that these things exist, I think they should be showing as promoted on the myebay page, it is possible I'm too early on the curve and they aren't properly showing there yet.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@ricarmic 

Definitely finding this "dipping your feet into the Promoted Listing Express" test most interesting. To my mind the whole concept is very much about how many listings are in a particular category and the % that are being promoted. Same thing happened with the original promotion method. Fine at first but as it caught on more "stuff" starts to slowly show up lower in search. You end up chasing your tail to end up near the top.  Better when there are lots of similar items around or more for OOAK items?

The final eye opener will be the end cost(s) and when is it really worth it?

-Lotz

PS. As a side, in theory shouldn't it work the same way on either eBay site?

[kawartha-ephemera]

Lotz wrote: "Fine at first but as it caught on more "stuff" starts to slowly show up lower in search."

This was my take away of the original PL roll-out as well. In the beginning those who chose not to participate did not experience a huge impact during the first year and half but little by little that changed in a big way. Now, three years or so later one is more or less obligated to promote heavily to maintain sales. If xpress does take ahold the detrimental effect on non promoted auctions will likely be much worse.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@kawartha-ephemera 

It's similar to the ongoing conundrum with the free promotional listings that the majority of sellers have qualified for the last year or so. As sellers list more, each needle gets smaller in the available haystack making listings harder to find unless buyers are willing to scroll days on end.

According to my Hub Page I have access to 100,000 listings + 350 store listings.

Going by Monthly limits I can only list 4200 and change. Square peg in round hole.

-Lotz

-Lotz

[reallynicestamps]

Are you using the default Best Match search?

I think "newly listed" is part of the criteria for that Search.

[kawartha-ephemera]

Just for fun I ran another search this afternoon. Yesterday I was not signed in, today I signed in to a rarely used account, not this one, but used the same key words and filters as yesterday.

Of 972 listings, your two came up 242 and 244 today with the higher priced one ahead of the other.

Maybe they'll move up during the last 24 hours? Of course search is but one source of impressions and views, for all I know they could have been served up in front of thousands all over eBay.

Seems like there's no reporting available yet, have you found that anywhere? I noticed the PL dashboard on DOTcom now has a drop-down to choose either Standard or Advanced campaign summaries but there's no trace of Xpress that I can find. Dotca still does not show anything other than Standard.

[ricarmic]

I haven't found any reporting of any type for it, I haven't phoned in to find out either yet.

The view counts for the double sized one continue to run about double 29 vs 15.

I'm not sure how much I can interpret from the numbers, these have a relatively regular following so some of the view counts will be them, but the regulars will check both (what might lurk!!!!) so it does seem as though the promoted one is pulling more views.

Further confounding will come because the smaller one non-promoted one has a bid, and that should increase its visibility so I expect the viewship of it will go up.

It is kind of funny that the "free" one has a bid and the one I paid $2 to promote doesn't, but these style of lots generally do not bring much bidding activity and the bids come because of what folks see, so a direct comparison can't be made that way.

[ricarmic]

I called into the support folks regarding this, the short version is that it is promoted, but the seller hub is not properly reporting it back, CSR was creating a ticket to get the design team to review and fix the reporting problem.

Just a views update with just under 24 hours to go:

The smaller is running about half the views of the promoted larger: smaller 37 larger 68.

I looked back at the last time they ran numbers were: smaller 20 larger 14.

Reminder smaller has a bid which should boost it a bit.

I think it is reasonably safe to say that the promotion is having an impact in terms of views, it has been consistently running almost double the entire time, and last time around the smaller one got more views than the larger one.

For this particular item I'm not expecting it to make much of a difference in terms of whether it sells or not based on what I mentioned earlier about varying content, but one never knows what will happen in the final moments!

I will at some point later try some more experiments, when the COVID situation calms down a little, my wee PO is running shortened hours now and I see an announcement on the CP website "With the rapidly changing situation regarding COVID-19 and the Omicron variant, we’re experiencing an impact on staffing. Safety protocols are being maintained as we adjust our operations to serve Canadians. Customers may experience delays." so I'm not wanting to push auction volumes for a bit given risk of self isolation, further PO reductions and overall delivery speed issues.

[ricarmic]

Just a final word on the items, they closed a few minutes ago, here are th results:

Smaller 46 views (sold for 1 bid)

Larger 100 views (did not sell).

Generally these lots don't sell at auction (but there was that one time one went high which keeps me trying 😉 ) so that isn't unusual.

The good news is that the views ended up being more than double for the promoted item, so the promotion was working.

My thoughts now are when I resume experimenting is that I'll use this on stuff I anticipate will have more chance of multiple bidders. 

[kawartha-ephemera]

Might be fun to try with something the seller knows full well will be highly sought after. The question is ... are the extra views likely to reach buyers that are seriously interested? The really serious ones are constantly monitoring the market and already have saved searches in place. Wouldn't they already be receiving new listing notifications anyway? I think that's why sought after items very quickly attract watchers. Of course eBay knows this, they might adjust their pricing accordingly.