As of yesterday eBay have started showing text adverts at the bottom of all eBay listings, including those paid for by business sellers as well as the free listings private sellers have access to.
The text adverts are of course simply off site links to alternative (largely) relevant retailers and services related to the product. A quick look to see the adverts and the first listings I looked at just happened to be a film, and one of the adverts was for LOVEFiLM the Amazon rental service. I’m sure we won’t see too many adverts for Amazon companies on eBay, but rather amusing nonetheless.
I have to admit to being a bit surprised at eBay, not because they’re happily flogging adverts on the site, eBay will have done the A-B testing, ensured that it doesn’t impact sales and figured out that anyone clicking the advert wasn’t going to buy on eBay in the first place. What surprises me is that they’re not focused on mobile.
There are no adverts on eBay Mobile apps listings, and with some 30% to 40% of buyers using mobile that’s a big chunk of buyers that will never see the adverts. If mobile traffic carries on increasing at current growth rates (upwards of 10% per year), then eBay can stick as many adverts as they like on listings and hardly anyone will see them anyway.
Of course the adverts assume computer based buyers scroll down the page far enough to see them just above the page footer, I can’t remember the last time I bothered scrolling that far, certainly today I only looked as I was curious to see the advert placement. It’ll be a long time before I see the ads again.
2 Responses
I have a rule…I dont click on ads on ebay. I find it offensive that they distract buyers from buying items. No wonder we are constantly having to change orders, due to buyers buying the wrong items (distracted??).
The streamed flash and video ads to the right in the listing header are a big distraction. Not happy about this recent innovation forcing my buyers to watch and hear stuff in the background whilst viewing the listing.