To grow revenue, eBay is counting on sellers willing to pay extra to promote their listings, beyond insertion fees. On Thursday, it announced the expansion of its ad solution for auctions, and said there’s more to come.
First introduced in September, “eBay Promoted Listings Express” was initially only available through the eBay mobile app. That was intentional, according to today’s announcement, in order for it to test usage and gather seller feedback.
By December, eBay had rolled out Promoted Listings Express to the desktop and mobile web so sellers could promote their auction listings from any device. However, auction ads are only available to “eligible” sellers located in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, and Spain. One eligibility criterion: Sellers must be Above Standard or Top Rated.
eBay Promoted Listings Express ads work differently than other eBay ad solutions, as eBay explains on a landing page for the offering:
“When you promote your listings with Promoted Listings Express, you’ll pay a flat fee upfront to place your listing as a sponsored ad on similar listings. When a buyer clicks on the sponsored ad, they’ll be taken to your listing.
“You can promote any auction-style listing, except for items listed in the Vehicles, Real Estate, Travel, or other select categories.”
It also appears that Promoted Listings Express ads are only displayed inside other listings, not in search results or other areas of the site. eBay states: “Listings promoted through Promoted Listings Express will appear in sponsored placements on listing pages of similar listings.”
The million-dollar question: how much do ads for auction listings cost? “Your Express ad fee will depend on the length of your auction-style listing and the category you select when listing your item. When promoting your listing, you will see the fee clearly stated before confirming your purchase, and will be charged immediately.”
eBay said today that early seller feedback for Promoted Listings Express has been positive and said it will continue to expand the ad solution for auction listings:
“Over the next several months, we plan to offer sellers more ways to access Promoted Listings Express and their ad report, in addition to expanding the placements across eBay. These changes will allow more sellers to take advantage of this visibility boost for their auction items and see the impact their promotion is providing.”
You can find today’s full announcement on the eBay corporate blog.
and the slimy hands reach even deeper into “sellers” pockets
The most troubling part of this is that they will post these on our auctions or BIN listings. So even if a buyer clicks on your listing with the intent to buy it, they can be pulled away to buy from someone else. Will these appear on the checkout screen as well?
eBay is now a Pay Per Play site. If you are willing to pay them far more money you will be able to steal away sales from other sellers at the last possible second. So only those who can afford the extra funds will be getting the majority of the sales. The CEO clearly has no clue on the fact that small sellers made eBay what it is. Using terms like “Low Valued Items” or “Low Value Sellers” are insulting to say the least, and show how little the CEO feels about the vast majority of those sellers on the site.
eBay clearly is wanting to gain revenue from increased fees instead of improving the site, and selling more items. The CEO has said many times that they want to increase revenue off the backs of sellers, and do not seem to be worried at all about selling less items per year.
This is a short term strategy that is not at all looking at the long term consciences of these actions. This is also why eBay is now #3 in a market that they created. eBay seems to be losing ground daily due to poor decisions like these.