eBay Open 2024 Day 2: Keynote & A Big Announcement For 30th Anniversary Event In 2025
Chief Marketing Officer Adrian Fung kicked off the eBay Open 2024 Day 2 keynote with an update on eBay's marketing efforts, saying eBay is working to meet buyers where they're at across online and real world partnerships and campaigns.
Adrian preview a video highlighting some of the new "eBay: Things. People. Love" marketing campaigns featuring eBay sellers and messaging aimed at bringing Gen Z to the platform to shop rare, vintage pre-loved fashion and beyond.
Liz Morton
He also highlighted some of eBay's key sponsored content partnerships with Vogue, F1 racing, The Athletic and more - a strategy that no doubt brings attention to the platform but has also raised questions about media ethics and integrity concerns.
Liz Morton
VP & GM of Global Payments and Financial Services Avritti Mittal announced the expansion eBay's partnership with Liberis to provide Flexible Cash Advance financing
eBay has teamed up with Liberis, a leading embedded finance platform, to expand its Seller Capital program in the US with the introduction of Flexible Cash Advance. The new option provides sellers with quick access to larger and even more flexible funding to help expand their businesses. Sellers can advance funds anywhere from $5,000 up to $2 million. They also have the flexibility to unlock even more capital as they pay - but only pay for what they use.
A recent PYMNTS Intelligence report found that 70 percent of small businesses have less than four months of cash to cover operating expenses. With Flexible Cash Advance, sellers can use the funding to purchase more inventory, and handle unexpected expenses and seasonal fluctuations throughout the year.
Sellers can apply once to secure an approved capital amount through Flexible Cash Advance and get advances on demand without undergoing the application process multiple times. This can be a critical safety net for sellers that need access to financing anytime.
Flexible Cash Advance comes just months after eBay first announced their partnership with Liberis to offer a different Business Cash Advance product, with some sellers grateful for a solution to replace previously available PayPal Working Capital loans and others alarmed by the high cost of taking financing through Liberis.
Liz Morton
Head of Payments, Risk and Financial Services Deepak Sharma briefly spoke about eBay's auto-payment requires and efforts to "reduce unpaid items on the platform" but just like Jamie Iannone's Day 1 Keynote comments on the topic, no real details were given - and just like I said then, eBay's lack of direct communication about these efforts makes it almost guaranteed that neither buyers nor sellers will be happy with the results.
Sharma also highlighted the new Order Earnings Report, which was announced as "coming soon" as part of the Summer 2024 Seller Update in June before suffering an embarassing premature launch failure in August.
Liz Morton
VP GM Global Advertising Alex Kazim was up next, giving a brief overview of the different types of Promoted Listings ad products and announcing Promoted Offsite is expanding to more channels beyond Google, including Bing.
He also showed a slick video presentation about the new Ads Dashboard experience - continuing eBay's tone deaf talking points about "intuitive design" and "advanced tech" while still ignoring questions and concerns about lack of transparency and granularity.
Liz Morton
Sellers in the chat section of the event vented some of their frustrations about eBay ads, particularly centered around the increasing "pay to play" nature of selling on the platform and continued ratcheting up of ad rates eating into profits.
Promoted listings suck..no more pay to play, it sucks
eBay loves it when you use the suggested promotion rates. it's like handing over a blank check
Promoted listings is just a way for eBay to make more money. Been doing this for over a decade and our sales dropped when promoted listings started and it costs more money now to make less money.
If you're wondering why sellers are growing increasingly hostile toward Promoted Listings, all you need to do is turn off your ad blocker and check out what Kazim and his team have turned the eBay View Item page into with over 300 ad slots often shown on many listings - most of which are competing products that distract and direct buyers away from the item they originally clicked on to view.
And that doesn't even get into the many ways in which ads have taken over search results, watch lists, purchase history pages and more as eBay seeks to monetize every pixel of the site.
Liz Morton
The eBay Open 2024 Day 2 Keynote was wrapped up with a very scripted and stilted conversation between Senior Direct of Trust David Newman and eBay seller Lori Wong.
David acknowledged concerns Lori raised about how the VeRO (Verified Rights Owner) program negatively impacts sellers, saying eBay is shifting away from their historical "more punitive approach" of completely removing listings flagged as violations and instead putting those listings on hold to allow sellers time to correct the issue or appeal the strike.
But it was a question about changes to eBay's feedback process that have morphed what was once supposed to be an opportunity to comment on an experience with a particular seller into required product reviews that caught the attention of eBay community forum members - mostly because David's answer was completely evasive and didn't address the question posed to him.
wastingtime101
One of the most comically bad things from eBay Open so far ...
Anybody that frequents this forum knows how much sellers have been frustrated with eBay's push for buyers to include product reviews in feedback. An eBay seller brought up this point very directly, and the response was seemingly to a non-existent question.
Seller: A pet peeve are buyers who receive brand new items but claim flaws that did not exist when we listed and shipped the item. I dislike feeling like I am being blackmailed and I can’t stand up for my business without worrying about getting negative feedback.
I know some sellers have the impression that you need to keep 100% feedback and that’s not my point of view. There are times that we make mistakes in our business, and we own that.
But what aggravates me is when there is nothing wrong with my service or the accuracy of my listing, but the buyer just didn’t like the product.
I’d love to see more of a separation between feedback about the level of service I provided, which I can control, vs the buyer's opinion of the product, which I cannot control.
And, I’m not saying that reviews of the item are not valuable. But I don’t think it should reflect negatively on me as a seller and the service we provide when the buyer gets exactly what they ordered but are experiencing buyers remorse.
eBay's response - has nothing at all to do with product reviews! :
Once again Laurie, you are raising great points. First off, I want to be clear to all sellers that any evidence of a buyer using the threat of negative feedback to get something in return is against our policy. In addition, we will absolutely take down negative or neutral feedback that was left because the buyer asked you to cancel, and you were unable to or chose not to. Or, if a buyer asked for money off of the item and you refused. That’s entirely your right and we will protect you from negative feedback.
In fact, as follow up to the last Seller Check-in, I want to let everyone know that we’ve made it much easier to understand all our policies around feedback removal. Our community relies on honest, transparent feedback. And, over the last year, we began work to create a more streamlined and consistent process for sellers to ask for feedback removals.
However, as these new changes were put into action they exposed gaps in our underlying policies. We realized that we did not have every valid use case covered for our sellers and, as a result, some feedback removal requests were rejected in situations where you deserved to be protected.
Since this spring, we’ve been working to update our policies and processes and you can find more details on our new Feedback policy page. Just scan the QR code on the slide or go to our Help pages and search for “feedback policy.”
I have to agree - while the new feedback removal policy changes rolled out earlier this month are important, that had nothing to do with Lori's point about why it's important to have separation between feedback left for the seller and reviews about the product.
Another community member echoed that sentiment, saying it seemed like Newman just had an agenda to push with no real direct answers given.
Absolute garbage. He had a script to read by and had an agenda of points he wanted to make. All of his answers were "related" to the questions Lori asked but there were no direct answers. All of them were scripted based on generalizations.
Once again, the pre-recorded format of this "eBay Open" just makes it seem all the more slimy and scripted and all about what eBay wants to force feed their sellers and buyers.
eBay opens seems like a two day advertising session for eBay to tell us what they want us to know. (and think) Rah Rah Rah
If, like this seller, you're also bored with the canned, pre-recorded virtual eBay Open events of the last few years, then US GM Dawn Block and SVP Global GM Jordan Sweetnam have exciting news for you.
After painfully and obviously teasing the big reveal for several minutes, they announced a "big in person event" is being planned for eBay's 30th anniversary next year!
Jordan: We have a big birthday coming up next year. eBay is turning 30 years old. And to commemorate the moment and to recognize the sellers that make everything possible every year, we're excited to announce that we're planning a large, in-person eBay Open event to celebrate our 30th anniversary in 2025.
Dawn: That is amazing news. We're so excited to get everyone together in-person next year. For folks who remember eBay Live or our eBay Open events in the past, we hope to recapture that magical feeling again next year.
We'll of course continue to offer a virtual version of the event so everyone can still attend and follow along just like now. We'll be sharing more details about our plans in the new year, but for now, we hope that you're as excited as we are to get together in-person next year.
It sounds like we'll have to wait until after the first of the year to get details about dates and a location but they've opened up an eBay 30th Anniversary Group in the community for sellers to follow for updates and reminisce about eBay live events past.
community_team
If you missed Day 1, catch up on the details here:
Liz Morton
And let us know in the comments if you plan to attend in-person next year and where you'd love to see them host the big anniversary event!
