Ad Blocker Hides Promoted Listings In eBay Search, Hurting Memorial Day Weekend Sales
eBay sellers worry ad blockers may stop Memorial Day sales as sponsored Promoted Listings ads are hidden from search by Ublock Origin.
The issue appears to have started possible some time last week and has persisted through the weekend with no acknowledgement from eBay and no way to determine the impact it might be having on sales.
Promoted listings seem to be getting blocked by adblockers again (at least with ublock origin). Search for an item on a desktop browser and the promoted listings briefly show up at the top before suddenly disappearing. If I disable the adblocker the sponsored listings show up properly again.
This wasn't happening a couple days ago. I remember this being an issue a while back and haven't noticed it being a problem in a long time. What trickery is ebay cooking up with promos that's causing this issue to resurface....
...does nobody care that they're paying to promote listings that are actually being hidden by adblockers during a busy holiday shopping weekend?
I was able to replicate the issue in Chrome with UBlock Origin - with UBlock turned off, the sponsored ads show in search results but if it is turned on, Promoted Listings will show for a second when the page initially loads and then be almost immediately hidden.
I've also tested in Firefox with AdBlockPlus installed and that does not appear to be blocking Promoted Listings at this time, nor does either AdBlockPlus or UBlock Origin block sponsored ads in the 100+ spots that show competing items on the listing/view item page - currently it seems limited to only the search results page and only when using UBlock Origin.
Many sellers have mixed feelings about opting in to Promoted Listings ads at ever higher ad rates, but they increasingly feel it is a necessary evil and all but required in certain categories in order to maintain visibility on the platform.
Given how important those ads can be to visibility, eBay has faced questions and criticism in the past when sellers have discovered widespread blocking of their Promoted Listings ads by ad blockers - especially in light of changes that were made to how the site typically handles whether to show the promoted or organic version of an item that is in a Promoted Listings campaign as part of the 2019 Fall Seller Update.
Since that update, eBay's policy page for Promoted Listings Standard has said listings will only be shown once in a search result, either the promoted version or the organic version, but not both.
Can the same promoted listing appear in more than one placement on the same set of search results?
No. An individual listing will only appear once in the same set of search results. If your listing is promoted, it will either appear as a promoted listing or an organic listing.
I have seen examples where eBay will still show both promoted and organic versions of the same listing in search when the buyer switches the sort order to anything besides the default Best Match option, but many buyers may not change from default sort order.
In that scenario, if eBay has shown the promoted version of your listing but it is hidden by an ad blocker, they typically will not show the organic version later down the page - meaning the buyer will never even see your item in the search results.
The Auction Professor YouTube channel brought attention to this same issue back in 2019 when AdBlockPlus had made changes which blocked Promoted Listings ads.
Surprisingly, then VP Seller Experience Harry Temkin joined in the comments, explaining that most ad blockers are designed not block "non-intrusive content, native content" and that eBay's data suggested promoted listings are blocked for less than 2% of traffic - an answer many sellers at the time found less the convincing or satisfactory.
eBay tweaked something about their ad display modules that temporarily improved the situation, but the problem cropped up again in 2022, with testing at that time showing ad blocking rates were significantly higher than "less than 2%."
Liz Morton
More tweaking ensued and for the most part eBay appeared to have gotten the issue under control again, until these new reports started cropping up in the last week regarding UBlock Origin.
First party ads continue to make up much of eBay's revenue growth, delivering $370 million of revenue in the first quarter with over 950 Million live Promoted Listings.
That should provide eBay with significant financial incentive to address these ongoing issues that prevent sponsored listings from showing up in search when ad blockers are engaged.
If they don't get it figured out soon, sellers may lose trust in promoted listings offerings and choose to opt out completely rather than risk having their listings not seen at all if the promoted version is blocked and the organic version is not shown.
Are you concerned about ad blockers hiding your listings in eBay searches? Let us know in the comments below!
I may keep my present strategy in case eBay outwits the blockers occasionally. But I wish promoted listings would just go away.
If eBay focused on driving revenue from actual increased sales and buyers, instead of driving revenue from promoted listings and other cannibalizing ads, then all this cat and mouse would not be a issue. But ebay won't. Ad revenue as you note is the only growth engine for eBay earnings these days and so eBay is addicted to the sugar high it gets from promoted listings.