In the latest 2019 Q2 Investor call it was revealed that eBay Promoted Listings drove $89 million of revenue, up over 130% from a year ago, over 940,000 sellers promoted over $250 million listings in the quarter. eBay say that sellers are increasingly choosing to invest in eBay Promoted Listings and are seeing strong conversion and velocity.
We’d put a slight question mark against the “choosing to invest in eBay Promoted Listings – it’s rapidly getting to the stage where if you choose not to invest you will be giving up the top spot in search to a competitor. We’d still like to see eBay implement a policy where if your listing is the top spot in natural Best Match search results AND you have the top spot in eBay Promoted Listings than they hide the eBay Promoted Listing and give buyers the best experience without stinging you for additional money. Just because the buyer clicks the top (paid for spot) rather than the second listing you shouldn’t have to pay an additional fee – you’re still paying the normal listing fees after all!
eBay say that they plan to expand eBay Promoted Listings capabilities further while balancing the impact on the buyer experience. They expect to end the year with more than $700 million in total eBay Promoted Listings ad revenue and are well on track toward their goal of $1 billion in ad revenue over time.
There are two ways eBay are expanding promoted listings – they buyer side as the become ever more confident that they aren’t cannibalising the buyer experience and on the seller side by opening them up to more sellers. For example on the buy side eBay are adding eBay Promoted Listing in more areas such as on Product pages and on the sell side there are new tools such as the ability to volunteer to pay more for an ad in the sell your item form.
eBay say that they are also giving sellers better data so that they can understand and calculate an ROI on their ad spend on eBay. One interesting comparison to make for those sellers who also use Amazon Sponsored Product ads is the costs – currently a quick calculation of eBay’s revenue suggests that eBay Promoted Listings pound for pound compared to the returns are cheaper to run than Amazon Sponsored Products – let us know what your experience is.
This week at eBay Open eBay say that they’ll be sharing more about the future of ads.
2 Responses
1/ “We’d put a slight question mark against the “choosing to invest in eBay Promoted Listings – it’s rapidly getting to the stage where if you choose not to invest you will be giving up the top spot in search to a competitor.”
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AGREED. Promoted Listings is still in its infancy with early adopters benefiting. As more competition enters the fray for demand for the same screen real-estate, sellers are going to need to move he percentage slider further to the right to get the same visibility.
2/ “We’d still like to see eBay implement a policy where if your listing is the top spot in natural Best Match search results AND you have the top spot in eBay Promoted Listings than they hide the eBay Promoted Listing and give buyers the best experience without stinging you for additional money. Just because the buyer clicks the top (paid for spot) rather than the second listing you shouldn’t have to pay an additional fee – you’re still paying the normal listing fees after all!”
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I brought this issue up with eBay (under the old ‘FidoMaster’ moniker) back in March, along with the fact eBay does NOT disclose to Best Offer seller recipients whether their best offer is subject to promoted listings fees or not (the seller doesn’t know if the buyer clicked through a BO search result or not).
Ebay needs to provide transparency on this critical issue (and address the promote-natural Best Match ‘proximity’ problem).
To my understanding, both issues are currently unresolved and eBay hasn’t provided any update on either.
LINK ?
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Weekly-Chat-with-eBay-Staff/Community-Chat-March-27-1-00-pm-PT-General-Topics/m-p/29653656#M18944
In the media catagery (DVD & Blu-ray) best match has become a joke, sellers offering disc only (no case, or artwork and unsealed) in new condition, on most search results always come up top in best match and lowest price, aside from the fact it cannot be new if missing key parts of the product, it’s not comparing like for like products in any condition.
I use promotions that offer buyers a discount (buy 1 get one 25% off) or (10% off…) which used to increase sales by +/-30% but as ebay often hide these offers, sales have decreased overall this past month, despite double my normal listings, that I may have to pay extra for more visibility may be good for ebay, but is more likely to drive me off the site and cannot be in the best interest of buyers?