Buying your way to the top of Search results

[twyngwyn]

Buying Your Way to the Top of eBay Search Results (ecommercebytes.com)

anyone here using it?

[davewil1964]

No.

[twyngwyn]

am not surprised 😎

[davewil1964]

Economics 101.

Plus I would hope my buyers search by title and author, cheapest first. That puts me in the top 3 AUSTRALIAN sellers. If they want to buy from Pommies offering for less than I can post, buyers' choice.

[twyngwyn]

exactly....am wondering whether ANYONE (local) is using their clickbait

[p9games]

no intentions to do so.

[gec2002]

On the US boards there is a bit of chat about the impact it is having on sales, many small to medium sellers (you know those who aren't top 3 in Australian Sales 🤣) are blaming it for the drop in sales.  Must admit I have seen a big drop in my sales this week and wondering if its having an impact, but far too early to tell.  I have several stores and I am trying it out in a small way in one of them, just using a few key words.  However I think to really see any benefit you need to go at it hard and that could be expensive.  If it does work and the big players really go at it aggressively it could become a major issue for small sellers.

[digital*ghost]

Considering only one ad can be in the "top spot" this seems the perfect way to encourage people to keep bidding higher and higher, while concurrently making those who are in the top spot vulnerable to click fraud. 

Not interested, myself. 

[gec2002]

Yes, but will the rest of the page be filled by the under bidders??  That were not being part of the action could see you on page 2.  If your items are unique or a real niche area, then it's probably not too much of an issue, but if your in a tight market its likely to be a problem.

[digital*ghost]

The way I understand it, it's basically an auction for the top spot in search results (likely regardless of sort order), with no other spots available, and where the winner will disappear once their budget is exhausted. 

eBay would have to use "willingness to pay extra" as a metric in the BM algorithm to fill the rest of results with underbidders (it definitely couldn't apply in any other sort order), but that doesn't seem very likely given how they handle the initial sponsored listings program, as they only have one of those sponsored listings per page of results.