eBay Promote Your Listings update for Vehicle Parts and Accessories

There appears to be a problem with eBay Promote Your Listings showing nonsensical results in a few circumstances, particularly in Vehicle Parts and Accessories. eBay are going to temporarily stop showing promoted listings in a few edge cases whilst they work on improving the experience.

The type of case where Promote Your Listings aren’t working well is for instance, if you drive an S-Type Jaguar and are looking for windscreen wipers using parts compatibility, it’s probably be extremely unlikely you’d want to see eBay Promoted Listings for windscreen wipers fitting various models of BMW, Mercedes or Chrysler.

To keep search results as accurate and relevant as possible, from the first week of June 2019, buyers using eBay’s Parts and Tyres finder or searching for items in categories using parts compatibility, will no longer see eBay Promote Your Listings adverts in their search results. This is only affecting sub-categories within Vehicle Parts and Accessories which have the parts compatibility function.

“It’s important that promoted listings are relevant and complementary to a buyer’s shopping experience and the search results from Vehicle Parts and Accessories categories, using parts compatibility, were not always showing the most relevant promoted listings to buyers. To better the experience, our decision is to pause promoted listings from showing in search while we improve it.”
– eBay

Impact of pausing Promote Your Listings for eBay Sellers

Sellers that promote listings in the Parts and Accessories categories that use parts compatibility, will start to see less impressions, clicks and sales for their campaigns. Although these advertised listings will no longer show up in search results, they may still be promoted in other places across the site. Listings can still be promoted on an item page, for instance, as well as other places

Importantly, with eBay Promote Your Listings, you only pay when you sell, so if your ads aren’t showing it won’t cost you anything. You also don’t need to do anything to your campaigns. This feature is being improved and eBay say that they have an update on Promoting your listings ads in search results in September.

If you don’t pause or end campaigns and keep your Promoted listings running then your listings may still be promoted in other places across the site, like on item pages or in a buyer’s My eBay. You can consider increasing chances of sales by complementing Promote Your Listings campaigns with other promotional tools in Seller Hub such as Multi-Buy

“Whilst in the short term affected sellers will see less Promote Your Listings activity for their campaigns, ultimately this will improve the overall shopping experience on eBay, which is ultimately a good thing for both buyers and sellers.”
– eBay