eBay UK Thinks Sellers Want More Ads at the Top of Pages?!

eBay UK has today announced that they have been working on some new features for their Promoted Listings Advanced Beta program. What is confusing is the wording around the announcement which implies that feedback from sellers has led to them putting more ad slots at the top of results pages.

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From our understanding of what eBay sellers want, we see much more criticism of promoted listings and ads taking up “too much” space on the eBay UK results pages which leaves a bad taste in many sellers’ mouths.

This seems like a push by eBay to try and drive more sellers to pay them through their promoted listings program. Effectively telling eBay UK sellers that if they want to get the maximum visibility for their listings they are going to have to pay, otherwise, their listings will be buried under those sellers that do have a marketing budget for eBay UK.

As part of their announcement they have rolled out the use of negative keywords, something that Google Adwords uses should be familiar with as well as some updated reporting features.

If you are a user of promoted listings then this will be good news for you, if you don’t, then this announcement is not going to be great for your organic listing visibility.

You can see the full announcement from eBay UK below.

eBay UK Promoted Listings Advanced Beta Update

“We’ve listened to your feedback and have been working on new features for Promoted Listings AdvancedBETA that enhance your ability to reach more buyers. 

Recently, we expanded to more slots at the top of eBay search results, creating more opportunities for your listings to reach interested buyers from placements with the most traffic on eBay. Previously, only the top slot of search could be targeted so this expansion means even more opportunities to scale the visibility of your listings.

Both Promoted Listings Standard ads and organic listings are still eligible to appear in the top 4 slots. Be sure to optimize your campaigns and ensure that you have high-quality listings for the best chance of appearing in these placements. 

Along with expanding to more top slots, we’ve just launched a couple of new features:

• Updated reporting features: Your search query report now shows all of the keywords and buyer queries that your listings appeared for in one place. This will give you a better understanding of your campaign and reduce the amount of reports you need to download.
  
• Negative phrase match: This new match type lets you choose any specific keywords or phrases for which you don’t want your listings to appear in search results. With this, you’ll have more control and can ensure that your listings only show for relevant searches. As long as a buyer’s search includes words before and/or after your negative keywords, your listing won’t appear. For example, if your negative keyword is ‘red dress’ and a buyer looks for ‘red dress size 10,’ your listing won’t show in the search results. This way, you’ll be able to focus on keywords that are important to buyers searching for items like yours. 

These new features are available now, so give them a try by creating a campaign or adjusting an existing one to reach more buyers. 

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