In ‘early’ March eBay are adding the Antiques, Art, Coins, Dolls & Bears and Musical Instruments categories to those which Promoted Listings are available.
eBay Promoted Listings are a way to get more eyeballs on your listings, but comes at a cost – you select an additional percentage of the final value as your bid to have your listing promoted, which you then pay if your listing sells in addition to the normal final value fees.
There are a couple of things worth noting, firstly Promoted Listing fees are linked to success so you’ll only pay when you get a sale. Previous ad programs on eBay (such as AdCommerce) charged you regardless of whether your ad resulted in a sale or not. With Promoted Listings if someone clicks on your advert and then buys in the next 30 days then you’ll be charged the fee.
Remember that if a buyer buys your item through Best Match, rather than through promote your listing, there is no promote your listing ad fee. Also if they buyer doesn’t pay or returns an item then any Promoted Listings fee associated with the sale will also be refunded.
Finally don’t forget that there’s no point promoting dodgy listings. If your price is exorbitant or you have cruddy pictures so buyers don’t make purchases then eBay will simply stop promoting your listings. Even if you try to pay the maximum 20% Promoted Listing fee, if your listing converts poorly eBay won’t promote it.
Should you use eBay Promoted Listings if available on your account
Here at Tamebay we’ve seen a couple of similar eBay programs come and go over the years and all of them charged you up front fees or fees when a buyer clicked an advert. Promoted Listings is different as you’ll only pay if you get a sale.
If your product is already performing well in Best Match you might think Promoted Listings isn’t for you. However it’s worth experimenting as whilst your item appears for keywords when you search, we know that search results can vary for two different eBay users based on their past history and that Promoted Listings could appear in search results for lesser keywords for which you may have a lower search ranking.
Another reason for using Promoted Listings may be when you launch a new listing on eBay. eBay Best Match loves Recent Sales and if you can drive an increased number of sales you may be able to boost your new listing towards the top of Best Match more quickly.
Our advice would be to test, monitor results and test again. Remember so long as you have margin in your products you can’t lose as you’ll only pay when you get a sale.
7 Responses
It would be great if having a promoted listing can help to boost listings to the top of best match more quickly. That’s a great incentive to use it if it starts to work.
“Promoted Listings” is very clear evidence that ebay is capable of manipulating search for its own good. How does all this affect auctions where search is critical?