The more cynical amongst us have been expecting this for a while, but now it’s here: eBay are putting ads on listings. Under a section entitled “Helpful information” and then “eBay recommended services”, an animated banner pushing PayPal has appeared, reading “Picking up your item in person? Pay your seller with your mobile phone.” The ad is shown on items which do not allow collection in person; it’s likely to cause some confusion which is not going to improve the famous buyer experience.
I’m told it’s also appearing on listings which don’t accept PayPal at all; the potential for confusion there is going to be a nightmare for the sellers.
Sellers should remember that if they allow collection in person and then take PayPal, via mobile phone or any other means, they will have absolutely no seller protection in the event that the buyer decides to do a chargeback. People allowing collection should use a more secure and reliable method, like cash.
Those of us who pay eBay to list on their site are not going to be happy about this frankly outrageous move. Today it’s ads for eBay’s own payment service; tomorrow, are we going to see ads for our suppliers and our competitors appear on our listings?
Updated to add: It’s gone… for now. A Pink on the Powerseller Board has just commented that “clearly it wasnt the right creative for this placement. I asked PayPal to remove it – looks like its already been taken down.” So ads are coming, just not this one.
Updated again to add: eBay deny that there is any intention to feature advertising on the listing page. Here’s the post from the PSB:
There are absolutely no plans to use this area for advertising. It does not make any sense for eBay to distract a buyer away from this page and from making a purchase. In this sense, eBay and the selling community are completely aligned.
Highlighting the benefits of PayPal to buyers is not advertising from our perspective. When messaged under the right circumstances to the right people, it helps increase the level of buying activity – good for sellers and for eBay. The PayPal mobile service creative simply appeared by accident – as soon as we realised, we removed it.
Well… they would say that, wouldn’t they. This is the company who said that third party ads would only appear under search results when there *were* no relevent search results… and now carry more advertising all over search pages, above paid-for eBay listings. So forgive me if I remain sceptical.
9 Responses
“tomorrow, are we going to see ads for our suppliers and our competitors appear on our listings? ” Well, we already do at the bottom of searches, so I guess it won’t be long before it’s creeps into individual listings as well. 🙁
Looks like it’s gone! Thank goodness for that!
I just blank the lot out, its juust waal paper to me, rather like motorway signs, you know their there, but you take little notice of them,
Pink update on the PS Board:
“Let me add a little more insight here. We’ve had a section on the Item page for some years now with the name ‘eBay Recommended Services’. It is only used occasionally to highlight services that are directly relevant and helpful to a buyer considering whether to purchase the item. Its not a new placement.
There are absolutely no plans to use this area for advertising. It does not make any sense for eBay to distract a buyer away from this page and from making a purchase. In this sense, eBay and the selling community are completely aligned.
Highlighting the benefits of PayPal to buyers is not advertising from our perspective. When messaged under the right circumstances to the right people, it helps increase the level of buying activity – good for sellers and for eBay. The PayPal mobile service creative simply appeared by accident – as soon as we realised, we removed it.”
I’m ahead of you, Sam. 😀
As I’ve said before, to my mind ebay have made a corporate choice to disregard the bedrock that the business was built on, ie the relationship between themselves and the sellers on the site.
This bedrock has been constantly chipped away over the past few years, to the extent that a significant number of sellers have become disillusioned and have either walked or scaled back.
The revenue has to be clawed back somehow.
The off site advertising (and let’s not kid ourselves what this was a test for) is not only highly hypocritical of them, given the rules for sellers for off-site links, but proves that they no longer believe that a vibrant selling market is vital to the future plans of their business.
Face it folks, they do not care about you.
At all.
“Face it folks, they do not care about you.
At all.”
That’s ok, I don’t care about them either. Nor PayPal, Amazon or even Google. But I still make a profit on their site, so it’s all good.
“I’m ahead of you, Sam.”
Yeah? I wanna see the photo finish :-p
It shouldn’t be about caring about you, its about asking them to do the right thing so the TEAM of eBay and its sellers can improve its position in the marketplace. If you don’t ask the answer is no. In other words, if you see something that is inappropriate, just ask for the change. In this instance, they removed the advertising. As the leader, Bill Cobb needs to step up to the plate more frequently and identify “where” eBay considers itself “aligned” with its sellers…there are ways eBay can do this >and