There’s been an interesting complaint aimed at Devin Wenig on twitter claiming that there is too much advertising on the site and that important information is hidden in small print. We decided to compare the adverts on eBay and Amazon to discover which site carries the most advertising.
@devinwenig If you are wondering why eBay doesn't perform well against Amazon as it used to look at this product page. It's a mess! Advertisement dominates and half of it also animated and that distracts. Important information is in small print, like postage/delivery! pic.twitter.com/YuW9enm9iS
— gamerN3 (@GamerN3) April 17, 2019
Personally I think the complaint about postage and delivery information being hidden on eBay is very valid and we’ve written about this at length in the past. You can’t even see on the listing page (let alone search results) if the seller offers a shipping option that suits your required time frame without clicking into the delivery tab. Generally an economy option is offered and if express shipping is an option it’s a click away to find it and this just isn’t good enough.
Setting aside the key delivery information, when you highlight the adverts on eBay and Amazon side by side it’s clear to see that while there are a ton of adverts on eBay, there are even more on Amazon. If you’ve worked hard to get your keywords, titles, descriptions, product attributes, images and other vital information to win a position in search results that gets a click through to your listing, it’s Amazon that offers the greater number of alternative products to buy that may tempt a buyer to purchase elsewhere instead.
To make the comparison as fair as possible, we looked at the same product on both sites and then simply highlighted the adverts on eBay and Amazon in the screenshot below (Click to view at full size)
Adverts on eBay and Amazon
2 Responses
Amazon can probably sell more advertisements than eBay, as hardly anyone visits eBay in this day and age…
Must admit this is one of the thing’s that actually do not bother me that much about the two tax Dodgers are the 3rd party ads.
Actually found our packaging supplier through an Amazon 3rd party AD, and have been going direct ever since.
It does seem a bit counterproductive to take people away from your own offer however.
Sponsored ads for FAKE goods on these sites is more of a concern.