Competitor advertising appearing around and now WITHIN my listings!!! What the hell is eBay doing???

[achronicyarnoholic]

In their greed for advertising dollars, eBay has now placed competitor advertising (ie: company selling same products as I do but from their own website) all around my listings and even within my listing (just under payment information). Clicking on those ads takes the customer to the advertisers website - ie: away from eBay. Hell.... we're not allowed to even mention external websites as sellers - that brings down the wrath of eBay and gets our accounts frozen or closed and certainly prevents any emails with external websites being sent. I wonder if the dollars they're getting for the advertising is more than what I'm losing in sales and what eBay is ultimately losing in commissions and fees. This double standard is unacceptable and if they don't introduce a non-competitive advertising policy on individual sellers material, then I'm out of here and I doubt I'll be the only one.

[bubblegh]

Wow, that sounds quite interesting from a legal point of view, especially if you have paid money to create your listing, only to have your chances of selling diminished by this practice by eBay.

It could be a random advertising network thing, such as how legit companies like Target, Harvey Norman and such show up on banner advertising on illegal websites.  But it could also be officially part of their terms and conditions when you create a listing, that similar products may be advertised on your listing page, and by creating your listing you agree to have this happen.

But if it's not, and it's intentionally put on your listing because it matches some kind of automated program, well then this is indeed pretty bad behaviour!  If it's not in their terms, then you should contact them and complain to a supervisor.

So if you chose to stop selling here, where would you sell?  Love it or hate it, eBay is the #1 place for selling online unfortunately.  I've just given up on QuickSales again after listing some items and getting zero clicks after a few days again.

[chameleon54]

Double WOW.  ...........

There are settings in your "site preferences" that deal with cross promotional advertising BUT these may only apply to adverts for competitors ON EBAY, not for paid advertising from outside sources. My understanding is that these settings control the adverts for similar items from other ebay sellers that show up when buyers search your item. These settings are automatically switched to "opt In" by ebay and must be turned off to disenable cross promotion.

Having said that it would definately be worth a try turning these off to see if it has any effect on non ebay advertisers. 

*  Go to account tab. ( top left of summary page )

*  Select "site preferences" from menu on left of page.

*  I think there is a couple of relevant options. One has a link to "manage my account" that takes you to a cross promotion setting and I think there may be another setting near the bottom of the page that has some relevance. Just have a good look at the options before clicking the "manage account" link.

I cant gaurantee this will work, but the worst it will do is stop your ebay competitors adverts appearing on your listings AND STOP YOUR LISTINGS APPEARING ON THEIR BUYERS SEARCHES. ( thats the other important detail to be aware of. ) Currently your listings MAY show as adverts on the searches from buyers of other ebay sellers.

[maranock]

I have had a look at some of your listings and can only the the 'Similar items you may be interested in' listings from other sellers which appear on everyones listings (Unfortunately), as well as the sponsored ads underneath. Is this what you are talking about? Or is it the 'People who viewed this item also viewed'?

It is unfortunate that Ebay puts other peoples listings on yours but everyone gets that. It is unfair but there is nothing we can do about it.

Edited to add: sorry, I see that you are a longer term seller so you must be talking about ads that I have not been able to see on your listings.

[chameleon54]

---

@maranock wrote:

I have had a look at some of your listings and can only the the 'Similar items you may be interested in' listings from other sellers which appear on everyones listings (Unfortunately), as well as the sponsored ads underneath. Is this what you are talking about?

---

My understanding is that these adverts can be removed from your listings by following the steps detailed above.

[achronicyarnoholic]

Hi, I see the ads from the non-eBay advertiser when I am on my PC and bring up one of my items as a full page. ie: I click through from the item listing to see the full page of info on that item. These ads are not on 100% of my items, but definitely the yarns of the same brand that the advertiser (Love Knitting) sell, of which we have many brands in common. Their ads appear about 1/3 of the page down immediately underneath the payment options (ie: PayPal option). Thanks for taking the time to check it out.

[achronicyarnoholic]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Yes I agree eBay (up til now) has been a viable option to start up my business in light of the traffic they generate. I've favourably compared what I pay eBay to having to advertise my own website (yet to be completed) however I've now built up a sufficient following that I'm ready to leave eBay and take my following with me to an independent website of my own. Pushing me to do this is not only this issue with competitor's advertising in my listings, but also I believe eBay is investing less in their own advertising now. Last year I could Google search some of my brands of yarn and the eBay ads, linking straight to my shop, would be top of the search results. Last week, they were on page 2. Not impressed at all.

[digital*ghost]

Essentially, the way eBay's user agreement is set up, you agree to them placing third party advertising on your listings simply by creating listings here. It sucks, but it means the options are to accept it or not list.

The option mentioned above just stops eBay from showcasing other seller's listings between the main details and the description body (it will also mean your items don't get shown on other seller's listings).

I never see the vast majority of eBay's third party advertising due to installing ad blockers on all my browsers (not all buyers will use ad blockers, of course, but plenty do so like me, they'd never see them). 

[randomly_found]

You have in my opinion, the most scrumptious yarns on offer hands down. Every time a yarn listing stands out- i notice it is by achronicyarnoholic--- and based on your number of followers I'm not the only one 🙂 

[fanstoreoz]

sad