eBay Sellers Feel Pinch As 2024 Holiday Guide Pushes More Ads At Higher Rates
As other marketplaces put holiday marketing plans into motion, eBay makes it clear many sellers will once again be on their own to drive seasonal sales at ever increasing costs for Promoted Listings ads.
The eBay Ads Holiday Guide for 2024 has been released and unsurprisingly, eBay is pushing Promoted Listings Advanced and Offsite cost per click ads hard as they work to ramp up seller adoption.
For the Holiday Guide, eBay conducted a shopper survey that included 3,005 "holiday shoppers", though interestingly this year they appear to have declined to state how many of that cohort were specifically eBay buyers.
For comparison, the 2023 eBay Ads Holiday Guide explicitly said: "We conducted a shopper survey that included over 3,000 participants, inclusive of 1,500+ eBay buyers."
While the 2024 eBay Ads Holiday guide simply references surveying US shoppers or holiday shoppers: "Survey carried out between 07/10/24 and 07/16/24 among a sample of 3,005 holiday shoppers."
Could they not get any eBay buyers to participate or were they afraid of the results they might get if they did?
And of course, unsurprisingly the results just happen to match up to eBay's desire to convince sellers that increasing use of eBay ads at increasing expense is crucial for boosting holiday sales.
Also unsurprisingly, the Ads team didn't mention that eBay has decided to play Scrooge in this year's small business holiday story by more than doubling the minimum ad rate requirement for Dynamic Promoted Listings General campaigns.
Liz Morton
Sellers took to the eBay community to share in some "you have to laugh to keep from crying" therapy on the subject.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
Are they talking about THEIR Q4? I hope some sellers take the bait or I fear we may be looking at an across the board FVF increase not to far down the road
They did say Q4 earning were going to be a little short. Sounds like they are throwing everything at the wall hoping something sticks. And yes, Fees in general will be going up. IMHO
Will eBay Ads be an important part of your holiday selling strategy? Let us know in the comments below!
Promoted listing ad revenue is the only source of eBay revenue growth. eBay will keep pushing higher and higher ad rates, but beware eBay: at some point even that revenue will plateau as sellers balk at handing over ever higher percentages of THEIR revenue. It really is a short term move to keep Wall Street vultures happy by a vampire management that sees their tenure as short term: suck out as much blood as possible from sellers to fund their own c suite stock options and golden handshakes when leaving. All the hallmarks of a stagnating company.
