Do Promoted Listings increase sales? Regular Tamebay correspondent David Brackin of Stuff U Sell describes his experience of using promoted listings in this video. David reveals the increase in sell through rates and a look at the test results he saw when challenging Promoted Listings to see if they work.
In a three part series on Tamebay, David set up his trial methodology, reported his experimental results and gave actionable insights on how you can make eBay Promoted Listings work for you. You can read the original posts at:
Do Promoted Listings on eBay work? – The Trial
eBay Promoted Listings have a Significant Effect on Sales – Experimental Results
How to make eBay Promoted Listings work for you – Actionable Insights
Perhaps David’s biggest learning was that the evidence from his tests in 2019 for a statistically significant uplift in sell-through rate was overwhelming. Even with a minimum 1% bid, Promoted Listings increase sales. Equally, the biggest thing to avoid is the “1% over competition” bid setting. David said he’d never seen money go out of the door so fast so start small, ensure you know your margins and what you can afford, and experiment with slowly raising your bid rates.
You can learn more about Promoted Listings on the eBay Seller Centre
20 Responses
Of course promoted listings make sense!.
Just kidding!
With all due respect but that video is sponsored by eBay…?
We have 2 business accounts.
1st account is 4 years old with 100% positive feedback (top seller etc) and promoted listings brought zero sales. Zero(!). Tested over few months period.
2nd account is new, with little feedback, about 1/4 of (different) stock from above. Almost all listings are promoted and current rate is that about 2% of all sales are from promoted. That’s from last 4 months.
Waste of time really taking into account the level of “maintenance” for %. Perhaps some categories make sense for promoted. Talking from my experience.
I was interested to know how my 2019 was just for promo listings
I mean it clearly works, but at the same time I paid an extra chunk to eBay
Impressions 17,579,883
Clicks 46,467
Sold 1,556
Ad fees (£) 650.67
Sales (£) 27,157.46
We don’t do sponsored listing, possibly why our sales have tanked over the last few months. If it gets worse, we will move on and leave ebay. Our fees are already 12%, they want another 6.3 % trending rate or above to promote- really? 18% of the entire sale price whilst in turn offering no customer support and protection whatsoever !!! And yes I know we can promote for 1%, but we find unless you beat the trending rate it’s useless. We even tried beating the trending rate then reducing to 1%, again no sales. Before you ask, we sell unique antique items- so how ebay can even tell me there is a trending rate is laughable.
Thanks, but no thanks ebay.
There’s no proof anywhere that says Promoted Listings do anything of use. The majority of comments I’ve read say sales don’t change at all or even decline and you just end up giving more money to eBay. THAT is exactly what this is designed for. More money for eBay, less for you. As is the same with all their other gimmicks and schemes in which eBay claims you’ll get an X% increase in sales if you do this or that. It’s all rigged in favor of eBay and you can’t trust the numbers they’re giving you. Let’s also not forget that according to different data sources that at least 30-40% of PC and mobile internet users have an ad blocker of some kind that may block all Promoted Listings. Think about it. They won’t see your listing at all because eBay won’t be showing the organic listing if you’re promoting. In the long run Promoted Listings is just another scam in which eBay wins and the seller loses.
You do not have much of a choice. Even Magpie are doing “stealth FEES”, you are so far down the list you will never sell a bean these days.
The average rate they show is also misleading and frankly deliberately misleading. Those margins simply do not exist in our sector.
On top of it we have had to deal with counterfeit (although this is not as big an issue in our sector as some others), and eBay are criminal as far as I am concerned for not policing the site.
They are destroying their own site by the chronic mismanagement and in the long term just driving “burnt” buyers away for short term profit.
The only pro is your not paying for just clicks.
Stealth fees have made things like TRS, genuine fast and free totally redundant, we non longer bother with 24 hrs post.
PAY to Play is not a new idea, but only those with the deepest pockets (or of course the fakers with margin) can compete. This in turn means eBay is not the go to place for start ups and micro business..
Oops did not actually answer the question. They do increase sales but sacrifice margin, you can’t sell without them now.
.Our sales were 100 times what they were before stealth fees when TRS speed of post and having top metrics mattered.
As usual, a lot of groaning going on here.
Hands up all that have their own website and promote their own business other than through eBay / Amazon etc…
That is the trouble these days, many don’t have a business and just act as sales agents for eBay / Amazon but have to buy your own stock. You don’t have a recognisable brand, nobody knows who you are, you remind me of the old football chant; Who are you, who are you?
We are now running at 45/20/35 Amazon/eBay/website sales from 50/40/10 and our turnover is increasing.
It costs money to invest in your own business advertising & promotion, so far easier to ride on the back of the big marketplaces and pay a commission rather than invest in promotion yourselves.
Here is my last 31 days promoted listing reports. Recently I sent all my international listings ( over 9000 listings ) so far no major impact. I’ll wait around 30 days and let you guys know.
Campaigns: 5
Listings promoted: 192
Impressions 463,767
Clicks: 1,495
Sold: 187
Ad fees (£) 67.23
Sales (£) 1,004.12
if it sells for a profit we dont care
what ebay makes or how they do it
if some other market place can provide the same sales and profit we will use them
Stats for 2019:
Impressions: 190,101,525
Clicks: 501,142
Sold, 2,785
Ad fees: £27,954.07
Sales: £193,093.34
Our business model and category is not very common, however from personal experience in our category Promoted Listings were a game-changer.
Interesting, thanks.
It’s very hard to tell what incremental sales are, but you could do some proxy tests using pre- post- testing. Turn off PL for a week and measure sales and turn it back on. Don’t pick “special” weeks like payroll / bank holidays and see if it has an effect.
Or if you have wide inventory try running it on half one week and the other half the other week and see what the difference in sell-through rates looks like.
The trial that we ran required a lot of analysis of the underlying data that’s hard to do just with the eBay reporting pages.