eBay Traffic Reporting Updates Raise Transparency Concerns
UPDATE 11-8-24
No official answers from eBay yet, but a helpful seller in the eBay community did some testing and has come to the conclusion that Promoted Listings General External ad clicks are included in the Promoted Listings stat in the new Traffic page - contradicting eBay's own definition of that stat only including "on eBay" views.
valueaddedresource
I did a small test this morning. I do not use Offsite ads and all of my listings are in PL General campaigns.
Using incognito with Chrome, I found several of my ornaments displaying "Sponsored" when I searched Google. I screenshot my views data to report for Today before clicking on any of the Google results.
Then, I clicked on five of my ornaments ads to open the listings on eBay from the Google array. When I went back to my Traffic data for Today, the Promoted Listings view count increased by 5, while the External views remained at 0.
So, at least with this small test, it looks like views from "Sponsored" listings on Google report for Promoted Listings views on the Traffic page.
But further testing by the seller raised even more questions, as it would appear views that come from social media posts created by using eBay's Social sharing tool may not be accounted for in the traffic reports at all!
Take a look at these screenshots...this makes me wonder if the Social views (visits) are included in External, or maybe they are going into organic, or maybe they are not counted at all on the Traffic page.
Other sellers still report the new Traffic page is showing either blank information or wildly incorrect data for their accounts, an issue that eBay community staff have acknowledged and confirmed Product teams are aware of and working to resolve.
eBay's traffic analytics and reporting changes have made it to the desktop experience, continuing trend of technical misexecution and lack of transparency.
Sellers began noticing the changes to Traffic reports in Seller Hub yesterday, saying the new experience lacks critical information and granularity/visibility that the previous reports provided.
Unfortunately, it also appears that those sellers who reported the new analytics reports in the mobile app were showing blank or incorrect data are also seeing the same blank and incorrect data in the new desktop experience as well.
Liz Morton
The number one complaint seems to be that instead of being able to see charts and statistics for Impressions, Views, and Sales in a stacked bar chart configuration that allowed easy comparison, sellers now have to click through on separate tabs for each statistic, making it much more difficult to see how the performance of all of those statistics move together over time.
Here's what the previous page used to look like (with a third bar chart for sales not shown here.)
The old report also had a feature that allowed you to hover over a specific day to see a pop up with a breakdown in both whole numbers and percentages for Impressions, Views, and Sales stacked together.
This was functionality was particularly helpful for allowing sellers to catch anomalies and technical issues - like that time when eBay stopped showing organic views for several days.
Liz Morton
Now, the new report breaks each of these stats up into separate tabs (note, this screenshot is from an account that is experiencing the blank/incorrect data issue, so the display is an accurate representation of the new page, but the numbers may not add up.)
And when you hover over a day, the pop up now only shows that stat, not all of them stacked together.
In the words of eBay community member, that makes the new report require more clicks while being less useful.
mcdougle4248
The new design makes it difficult to compare the three data points; impressions, listing views, and quantity sold. I previously could hover over the graph and view all three data points in the pop-up.
Now the pop-up only contains the one data point I selected. I have to change the data point selection to view the information. More clicks and less usefulness IMO
YouTuber and eBay Seller James at The Great Seller Life echoed those sentiments, saying the new reports are more difficult to understand and glean the information he used to be able to see at a glance, plus waste seller time by requiring more clicks.
There's also one big glaring data omission in the new reports - sellers can no longer see an aggregate total number for Impressions By Placements, which used to show Top 20 Search Spot Impressions, Rest of Search Slot Impressions, and Non-Search Impressions.
That information is now only available on an item by item basis in the listing reports, which would require downloading a CSV file and doing a lot of formatting and manipulation in order to try to get the broader picture that used to be shown at a glance on the page.
Under the Listing Views tab, changes to the definitions of terms also raise questions about how external views (particularly external views from Promoted Listings General campaigns) are reported compared to the previous analytics.
Promoted Listings General cost per sale ads are typically displayed on eBay in placements across search and item pages, but also can be displayed externally ib search engines like Google.
Where do Promoted Listings ads appear?
Promoted Listings may appear in prominent placements across the eBay network, including the search results page and product pages.
The eBay network is a group of sites where your promoted listings could be featured, including eBay and partner sites across the internet.
Your promoted listings may appear in sponsored placements off eBay, including search engines, to help drive traffic to your listings when buyers are actively searching and shopping across the internet.
By default, all listings in general campaigns are eligible to appear in external sponsored placements. Those ads may preempt other eBay-funded marketing efforts we may take on your behalf.
That is different from Promoted Offsite ads, which are a cost per click model eBay introduced in 2022.
Liz Morton
The old report defined "Promoted Listings" views as "visits to a listing page from a Promoted Listings ad shown on eBay."
And External Site Views as "visits to a listing page from external sites, including search engines, offsite ads, and promoted listings ads shown outside of eBay."
That meant that Promoted Listings General ads views that came from external placements were included in that external site views statistic.
The new reports are much less clear about where those External General Cost Per Sale views may be accounted for - if they are at all.
Promoted Listings is now defined as "total visits to your listings on eBay from your Promoted Listings campaigns." Because this specifies on eBay placements only, that rules out any external placements being included in this stat.
A new line has been added for Promoted Offsite, which is defined as "total visits to your listings off eBay from your Promoted Offsite campaigns."
Since this specifies off eBay placements, these are obviously only views from external sources but since it also specifies only Promoted Offsite campaigns, that rules out the possibility of Promoted General External views being included in this stat.
And now External is defined as "total visits to your listings off eBay, including from search engines. Excludes listings you paid to promote."
Since this specifies off eBay, that would of course be views from external sources, but because it also explicitly states it excludes listings you paid to promote, it can't possibly count Promoted Listings General External views.
So where are those Promoted Listings General External views supposed to be accounted for now?
For many years eBay proudly patted themselves on the back for the fact that while appearing in Google ads wasn't actually free, they enabled millions of listings weekly to be shown in those spots without charging sellers anything extra, because it was an "investment".
Just one example from 2020, with then US GM (now SVP Global Markets) Jordon Sweetnam clearly taking a swipe at the competition:
seller_news_team
Unlike on some other platforms, eBay sellers pay nothing extra to appear in Google Shopping. It’s included in your eBay fees, and fixed priced listings are automatically eligible to get pulled into Google Shopping results.
Every week, eBay millions of site visits from paid-search marketing, including Google Shopping. Getting listings to show up in Google Shopping isn’t free, but like we said before, our sellers pay nothing extra for this exposure. It’s an investment eBay makes in our sellers, and one we know is worth it.
When eBay introduced External Placement for Promoted Listings Standard in 2021, many sellers were concerned that meant eBay was moving away from the previous "free" inclusion in Google ads and would be giving a preference to PLS ads for those slots.
eBay was fairly vague about it at the time and simply said PLS External would provide "incremental visibility" across the web and that if sellers opted out, their listings would still be eligible to appear in Google ad placements (though of course eligible does not mean guaranteed).
Admin eBay-Blogs
We’re happy to share that moving forward, Promoted Listings Standard will be featured in these external ads, expanding the reach of sellers’ Promoted Listings Standard campaigns and providing incremental listing visibility across the internet...
...It is not mandatory to participate in external Promoted Listings. eBay sellers can opt out here. Sellers who do not participate will continue to be eligible to appear in eBay’s external advertising.
I saw a lot of the same concerns raised when Offsite Ads were first introduced as well, with sellers thinking while listings not enrolled in any advertising may still technically be eligible for external placements, they may be included less often and that those placements may even possibly be reserved for items or categories where eBay feels the "investment"is still worthwhile.
As noted above, the policy pages for Promoted Listings General cost per sale still say they are eligible for External placement, but the changes to traffic reports make it difficult to tell if those placements are still getting visibility and converting to clicks and/or sales.
It does appear you can still get the breakdown showing PL General External views in a downloadable CVS file (for now) but again, that is more cumbersome and requires additional steps, not to mention it is once again on a per item basis so it's more difficult to get a the broader aggregate picture sellers used to be able to see easily at a glance with the old Traffic page.
That puts these changes on par with similar changes to the Ad Dashboard reports that were rolled out in July, which were also largely not well received by sellers due to lack of transparency and granularity.
Liz Morton
Sellers are encouraged to provide feedback about the new Traffic page design directly to eBay by clicking the floating question mark in the bottom right of the screen and clicking the "Send feedback" link.
What do you think of eBay's new Traffic reports in Seller Hub? Let us know in the comments below!
