One of the key ways eBay connect buyers to their marketplace and with your inventory is through marketing investments, which ensure that eBay listings appear in external eBay ads on partner sites and search platforms like Google and Bing. Moving forward, Promoted Listings will be featured in these external eBay ads, expanding the reach of sellers’ Promoted Listings campaigns and providing additional listing visibility across the web.
Heads up, the new external eBay Ads for Promoted Listings feature has only been announced in the US so far. We’ll let you know when it’s announced in the UK and EU.
“While we are excited to introduce external Promoted Listings, we remain committed to providing sellers with the opportunity to be included in eBay’s external advertising at no charge. Sellers will not be required to participate in external Promoted Listings in order to be eligible to appear in eBay advertisements on search platforms or partner sites.”
– eBay
No cost…. and what it’ll cost you
External Promoted Listings come at no additional cost to sellers. This means that you don’t have to pay anything to have your Promoted Listings included in external eBay Ads.
However, you will still pay the same fees as normal for a successful sales. The Promoted Listings ad rate works the same on and off eBay. If a buyer clicks on a promoted listing and purchases that item within 30 days of that click, you will be charged the ad rate determined at the time of the click.
Updated reports for External eBay Ads
eBay have updated downloadable campaign reports to show the impact of external Promoted Listings. Metrics include:
- Promoted Listings clicks (via external placements)
- Promoted Listings conversion rate (via external placements)
- Promoted Listings sales (via external placements)
- Ad fees (via external placements)
Opt out, Opt in
- Sellers who use Promoted Listings will be automatically eligible to be featured in external Promoted Listings. Sellers who use Promoted Listings will not need to take any additional action.
- It is not mandatory to participate in external Promoted Listings. eBay sellers can opt out, and sellers who do not participate will continue to be eligible to appear in eBay’s external advertising.
In other words, if you don’t want to pay the Promoted Listings fee for a successful sale from off eBay, best to opt out, you can of course choose to opt back in. However, if you opt out eBay might still show your products in external eBay Ads, for example on search engines like Google and Bing and if they do you won’t be charged an ad fee. However, it’s much more likely eBay will feature your product if you’re opted in and it won’t cost you more than if someone clicked on your Promoted Listing on eBay.
For most sellers, this is a ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ rather than a ‘Why would I?’, if that is you’re already using Promoted Listings.