eBay Video In Listings Delays Raise Server Processing & Latency Concerns

Liz Morton
Liz Morton


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UPDATE 8-21-24

eBay is once again struggling with delays in processing videos in listings with dozens of reports posted in the eBay community today.

Videos under review for the past 24 hours
Hi, Normally the videos I upload to my listings take about 5 minutes to become live. It has now been 24 hours and all of my 70 scheduled listings are still showing under review. Has anyone else been having issues this week with video uploading. Thanks!

Normally the videos I upload to my listings take about 5 minutes to become live. It has now been 24 hours and all of my 70 scheduled listings are still showing under review.

Has anyone else been having issues this week with video uploading.

I posted a video yesterday and today in 2 different auctions and neither has become live yet. And like you, it used to be only 5 minutes or less for videos to become live when I posted them. Either there is a programming glitch or they are really looking at every video now before they go live.

video
I posted a video on my car sale listing. It has been over 4 days and it is still under review. How can I get assistance on this. Thanks in advance. Jim

I posted a video on my car sale listing. It has been over 4 days and it is still under review. How can I get assistance on this.

Its been 6 days and eBay not approving videos like before.
I know this is systemic, ebay support knows this is systemic. I was told by support many people uploading videos and there is a backlog. What were you told? Is it true that executives only meet once a week to figure out solution? Here is the solution: Managers , reassign employees to rev…

I know this is systemic, ebay support knows this is systemic. I was told by support many people uploading videos and there is a backlog. What were you told?

Is it true that executives only meet once a week to figure out solution? Here is the solution: Managers, reassign employees to review videos till you are all caught up.

SOme items have better sell rate if video is seen. It makes no sense to post an item on sunday when my target market is viewing and its days later when a video becomes approved.By that time, my listing is 100 deep. Im sure that is the case with others.

In the past, eBay has simply chalked these delays in relisting items or reviewing videos to "latency" and said it is normal for it to take 24-48 hours for listings to reindex or for videos to be reviewed.

Many sellers have believed that's just a catch all for anytime eBay's servers get bogged down and struggle to keep up, but what if the delays are sometimes actually intentional?

In some instances, eBay may be simply load-balancing, preferencing fast load time and responsiveness on the buying side of the site at times to the possible detriment to the selling side, especially during heavy traffic or peak load events.

The importance of optimizing for the consumer-buyer experience was laid out in a corporate blog post when eBay launched a company-wide Speed initiative in 2019, focused on improving performance across experiences on desktop, mobile, and apps and specifically targeting home page, search and item page performance - all importantly geared toward the buyer-facing side of the user experience.

The post explicitly calls out making cuts in certain areas to balance their "need for speed" as well as creating a committee to monitor and oversee application of the "speed budget."

Speed By A Thousand Cuts
In 2019, eBay prioritized a company-wide initiative, aptly called “Speed,” focused on improving the performance of critical eBay flows across all platforms — iOS, Android, and Web. This article explains the journey and outcomes.
Death by a thousand cuts is a popular figure of speech that refers to a failure that occurs as a result of many small problems. It has a negative connotation to it and is referenced on many occasions when things go wrong, and there is no one primary reason to blame.

We have a similar story at eBay, but this time on a positive note. In 2019, we started working on an initiative called “Speed” to improve the performance of end-user experiences across major consumer channels — iOS, Android, and Web.

Fast forward today, we have made significant improvements to our speed numbers, both globally and across all platforms, but there was no one major contributing factor. It was a culmination of many small enhancements (or “cuts” as we call it) that moved the needle.

It's certainly understandable why eBay would favor the performance of the buyer experience in the constantly changing calculations for how to prioritize resources, but if that is the case they should at least be upfront and transparent with sellers about it rather than hiding behind vague 24-48 hour windows when performance slows down.

Let us know in the comments below if you're seeing longer than usual review times for videos in your eBay listings!


UPDATE: 2-19-22

eBay community staff confirmed in the weekly chat that eBay had experienced delays in approving videos, but the backlog has been worked through and most videos should be loading in 24-48 hours - prompting me to wonder how in the world eBay thinks this new feature can possibly scale across the platform if they are relying on a human power manual review process.

Selling --Video In Listings Update on Review Process
We’ve had a few threads recently about using the new video-in-gallery tool, and how long is it taking for the review (before the uploaded video actually goes live). Here’s an update from Wednesday’s Weekly Chat: ”...the backlog has been worked through and ...currently the vast majority of videos are…

We've had a few threads recently about using the new video-in-gallery tool, and how long is it taking for the review (before the uploaded video actually goes live). Here's an update from Wednesday's Weekly Chat:

"...the backlog has been worked through and ...currently the vast majority of videos are being approved within that 24-48 hour timeframe, with nearly all others being approved 'shortly thereafter'. "

Best advice I can give, if your video is not live after 48 hours (or maybe a little longer), you might want to contact Customer Service. Hopefully, ebay will eventually put an actual process in place to make this easier.

I'm planning on listing some music boxes within the next week or so, so will have an opportunity to test this out.


A seller in the weekly eBay community chat said they are experiencing very long processing times for videos uploaded in eBay's new listing experience.

Re: Community Chat, January 26 @ 1:00 pm PT - General Topics
And, speaking of video, I have the feature, and uploaded a video to a listing last Friday night. The Video is still “under review”. I know ebay says “up to 48 hours” and in some busy periods, up to 7 days, but......how busy can they be? It’s a less than 30 second video. Basically one image and some…

And, speaking of video, I have the feature, and uploaded a video to a listing last Friday night. The Video is still "under review". I know ebay says "up to 48 hours" and in some busy periods, up to 7 days, but......how busy can they be? It's a less than 30 second video. Basically one image and some narration. Really, just a test...but I sure didn't expect to still be waiting on this.

If ebay doesn't speed up the process, it's hard to imagine people using this for auctions (and many auction are for items that could definitely benefit from video....) If ebay has run into a problem with the video review process, how about a little transparency and just tell us?

Tyler@eBay responded that he had not heard of any issues with the video review process but would share the input and provide updates as he hears back.

I agree that "up to 7 days" could be a problem for auctions, as it won't do much good if buyers can't see the video before the end of the auction.

Other sellers discussed the new feature in a separate thread.

New Listing Fomat Now Includes Video HOW ABOUT MORE PHOTOS!
If you have yet to use the (eventual) new listing format it now enables (short) video. Nice feature. Not sure about length & even when your sale goes live you won’t see your video until it’s approved. I think it’s 10 cents more. While we here pretend there are no other selling platforms I do belong…

Time for approval: ebay says up to 48 hours normally, but up to seven days if they are very busy. Not sure why your listing is not up. The listing should go live regardless of the video. If the video is approved, it will be added in (to the second slot in the Gallery). I don't know what happens if it is not approved. As I have said elsewhere, the approval process makes it a risky thing to use if you are using auction format.

I posted a listing this past Friday night. The listing is live, but the video is STILL in approval limbo. I hope this is just the result of being an early adopter, and that they'll speed things up soon.

We have uploaded a couple videos to already existing listings and it took around 30+ hours....

...The videos do seem to be lower quality than originally uploaded though.

Yeah, I can also understand why they would not want 4k or large file videos on every listing. Hopefully it’s a computer algorithm and not just some poor soul sitting at a desk watching everyone’s video clips clicking verified.

Maybe once it’s fully released the process will be sped up

One seller did provide a link to a listing as an example for those who want to see what video in listings looks like. This listing is a great example of how the video feature can really benefit both buyers and sellers - being able to see how the labradorite catches light at different angles as it moves really makes it stand out.

2.31lbs PURPLE LABRADORITE FREEFORM - Rainbow Pink Mineral Sunset Crystal Witch | eBay
Incredible Purple Sunset Flash Labradorite #LABFF12.

(Value Added Resource has no affiliation with this seller and this is not intended as a promotion, just an example of how the video feature works.)

I can also see video in listings being very useful for mechanical items or items that move/make noise to show them in use as well as clothing where seeing how the fabric moves and flows could help make the sale.

More info about how to upload videos in the new listing tool here:

eBay Rolls Out Video In Listing To More Sellers
eBay is rolling out Video In Listings to more sellers, now available in the desktop listing flow in Seller Hub.

Video In Listings is an important part of CEO Jamie Iannone's tech led reimagination of the platform and transition away from legacy tech. As such, it's absolutely critical for eBay to deliver a stable, working product for this initiative.

Amazon, Etsy, Poshmark, Depop, and Facebook all beat eBay to the punch on providing sellers with video capability, so this new feature isn't really an "exciting next gen experience", it's simply eBay playing catch up with the competition.

Does eBay’s Tech Led Reimagination Stack Up Against Competition?
Etsy’s new augmented reality experience draws a stark contrast to eBay’s somewhat tepid tech led reimagination.

Hopefully they can get the kinks ironed out to speed up the review process. Beyond that, I'd love to see eBay incorporate "includes video" as a search filter on the buyer side as well.


Have you tried eBay's new video in listing feature yet? Do you love it, hate it, wish there were more bells and whistles? Let us know in the comments below!

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Liz Morton is a 17 year ecommerce pro turned indie investigative journalist providing ad-free deep dives on eBay, Amazon, Etsy & more, championing sellers & advocating for corporate accountability.

3 comments
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Soundman
Of course a human on EBAY's side has to manually review every video. They are paranoid that a seller might divulge personal contact information and EBAY could lose their commission. Everything they do is done primarily for the money!
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gogemgo2
I uploaded MP4 videos (10 sec. to 30 sec.) for all of the 61 NFT listings on Ebay. It took a few days for the approval to go through. I have no problem with the time it took to approve however, when I went back to check the listings after the review the videos do not work.
I guess I will need to contact them to see what happened but it was a lot of work on my part to get it all done in the first place.
Needlessly to say I am a bit frustrated!
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vgx
We've been using this since they made it an option through the API last year. The wait times are about the same now as they were then, 12 to 36 hours mainly, probably right when you lose the "Newly Listed" algorithm bump. The only explanation is they have a human moderate them, which is an incredibly strange choice and not scalable as a feature. Facebook and Poshmark post the video immediately on upload so I'm not sure what the problem is. Also, when the video thumbnail is displayed in the image set, it's "grayed" so it looks a different color than your images. Our videos have a pure white background, the thumbnail is a gray background, but watching the video is the true white background. I just don't understand it...
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Recent Comments
Avatar PlaceholderConcernedYesterday
It is Slowwwwwww and is more expensive to the buyer. In the past items I have ordered will sit at the hub for around 2 weeks. I avoid ebay unless I cannot get it elsewhere.
Avatar Placeholdermarks30472 days ago
Hi, I have a friend who had an interesting experience recently that fell under this issue. They sold an item, packed and dispatched to the UK Ebay hub, this was midway through the period as the pause occurred. They then received a message from the buyer that they had checked tracking and discovered that the item had disappeared on ebay, no advice. It then turned out that the tracking had been fudged and the package was with them but not forwarded on to the USA. A few hours of to and fro to get the answer that it was due to the tariff dilemma. NO fault of the buyer(who had paid) or the seller ((who had been paid) and a strange response that the item could not be delivered. The buyer would be refunded in full, the seller would keep payment and the item would not be returned. Strange, Ebay must be hurting paying our both sides of the deal+
Avatar Placeholdercwi3 days ago
  1. Start building out the brand and promoting the heck out of Canadian sellers to our domestic market. Work with Federal/Provincial level governments in the push to build a strong presence here in Canada.

  2. Add other calculated shipping options than Canada Post UPS/FedEx for domestic shipping - partner with couriers nationwide, leverage agreements and software integrations with courier reseller platforms such as Stallion Express. Build out a crowd sourced network using national/regional retail locations as drop points for rural regions, leveraging transport networks to move packages to courier pickup points, akin to the UK courier model but adapted to the Canadian realities.

  3. Create a centralized international shipping clearing house to aide micro businesses with affordable shipping rates and customs clearance to avoid pitfalls and complexities (akin to US eIS).

  4. Bring features forward to the platform from other localizations, such as prepaid best offer acceptance, etc.