eBay’s Second Quarter 2024 report and investor call has revealed some interesting insights around their advertising business (specifically for sellers, eBay Promoted Listings)
- During Q2, the first-party advertising grew 12%
- Total ad revenue approached 2.2% penetration of GMV
- Approximately 3.1 million sellers adopted a single ad product during Q2
- eBay ended the quarter with roughly 1 billion live promoted listings out of our nearly 2.1 billion total listings
With almost half of listings now being promoted, this is not only a massive income stream for eBay, but effectively means it’s a compulsory fee for sellers meaning that the baseline final value fees you’re charged for selling on the platform aren’t really relevant any more and are probably close to doubled when you factor in the cost of eBay Advertising.
In early July, we launched a complete redesign of our eBay advertising platform, which fundamentally changed how sellers create and manage their ad campaigns and made it simpler than ever to activate our full range of advertising solutions. This new interface is now available to all sellers across our major markets. It includes a centralized dashboard enabling sellers to make data-driven decisions by leveraging near real-time performance metrics, including impressions, clicks and return on ad spend.
For the first time, sellers can also see a list of personalized campaign recommendations aimed at helping them to achieve their sales goals, such as adding new keywords to increase listing visibility or lowering bids for keywords that are driving performance. Additionally, we’ve enhanced suggested campaigns to highlight new ad strategies for sellers by identifying emerging marketplace trends relevant to their inventory with prebuilt campaigns fully optimized by AI.
As part of this redesign, we simplified our first-party advertising portfolio into three distinct solutions that more clearly align with the seller’s campaign objectives. We unified our standard, advanced and express products into a single promoted listing solution, serving both fixed price and auction formats. When sellers launch a promoted listings campaign, they can pay on a cost per action basis for general placement, or select cost per click pricing for priority placement.
In addition, promoted offsite ads enable sellers to tap into a wider audience through off-EVA channels such as Google. Promoted Offsite uses a dynamic CPC model and automated targeting so users can set up campaigns in just a few clicks after setting a daily budget. And our newest format, Promoted Stores, enables sellers to increase their brand visibility when buyers are browsing or searching for contextually relevant items.
– Jamie Iannone, CEO, eBay
Jamie went on to say that the new dashboards should help more sellers grow their businesses on eBay by broadening the appeal of full suite of eBay advertising solutions and ‘delivering actionable insights in a more intuitive interface’.
eBay Advertising – Promoted Offsite
eBay expect some modest take rate expansion in the second half driven by their 1P ads business. That’s both from adoption, from listings penetration, from ad rate optimization, and scaling some of the new products that like promoted offsite and promoted source. Currently eBay are at 2.2% penetration with expectations to grow to 3%, but that’s not the limit, just a goal eBay see in the near term.
Offsite eBay Advertising is still relatively new and it’s worth noting that it’s not a short term investment for sellers, but one that takes time to optimise. eBay have said that when you launch a Promoted Offsite campaign, there’s a crucial phase known as the learning period. This period can last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks and is a time when the algorithm is hard at work. It’s gathering data, analyzing clicks, and optimizing your ads to ensure they reach the right audience. During this time, you might notice a delay in impressions or clicks, but this is entirely normal.
eBay suggest that for continuous improvement, consider extending your campaigns to run continuously. It minimizes the campaign learning when re-starting or creating a new campaign, allowing you to start advertising your listings quickly, efficiently, and effectively.
For sellers new to advertising, eBay acknowledge that it’s tempting to make changes if you don’t see immediate results. However, waiting a few weeks before making major adjustments allows the campaign to learn and adjust effectively. This patience can lead to better-targeted ads and, ultimately, more sales.
Experienced sellers, too, must resist the urge to make quick tweaks. Frequent changes can disrupt the learning period. Giving your campaign time to ramp up, learn, and adjust is crucial for achieving optimal results.
Finally, a common mistake sellers can make is pausing or restarting their campaigns too soon. This action resets the learning period, which can negatively impact the delivery and performance of your ads. Instead, set your campaign to a continuous end date to ensure a smoother learning curve and potential for better long-term results.
