eBay Ads Partners With Airtable For AI-Powered Customer Insights & Feedback
eBay's Head of Product Operations Angela Yanes recently stopped by Airtable LA to discuss how Airtable's AI-powered customer insights platform has transformed how eBay collects and processes user feedback with a pilot program centered around eBay's Promoted Listings advertising products.
The ~16 minute presentation was obviously designed for industry professionals, but eBay sellers might find it fascinating as well - especially as it gives a glimpse into what happens on the other side of the servers when they submit feedback or support requests.
Yanes joined eBay 4 years ago with a focus specifically on the company's advertising offerings and says she quickly realized the overwhelming complexity of the operation with multiple experiences catering to both buyers and sellers of all sizes and interests.
She says just in the Advertising organization alone, eBay launches 200+ project and takes in over 1 Million lines of feedback about those projects every year with issues logged in multiple languages across different devices and experiences from internal sources like eBay employees, support personnel and account managers as well as external sources like forums, social media and surveys.
The complexity of just trying to sift through, let alone action, that amount of feedback was daunting, leading to months long resolution cycles on some issues - so Yanes pitched a pilot program to use Airtable's AI integration to drive efficiency and increase response time.
For example, when eBay introduced their overhauled Advertising Dashboard experience last year (before using Airtable), Yanes says it took over a month just to collect feedback on that one project launch and another 4-5 months to build solutions for issues raised in that feedback - making about a 9 month total time frame from launch to "closing the loop."
On the user side - sellers noted the lack of transparency and less intuitive design, and also experienced several serious technical issues with the new dashboard, including server outages that left them in the dark with no way to view or manage their advertising settings and performance.
Liz Morton
And while there have been improvements, many seller say the new dashboard is still missing key data and access to information that used to be easily viewable in the previous version of advertising reports.
In showing a short demo of how eBay is now using Airtable's AI-powered capabilities to shorten feedback and response loops for the Ads organization, Yanes also inadvertently gives some interesting insight into what kinds of issues and feedback users are reporting regarding their experience with eBay Ads.
For example, this screenshot showing what feedback looks like in the Airtable experience shows a complaint about being unexpectedly charged ad fees two months after sales.
The user's feedback said "Difficult to use this page. Also the ads fee are charged any time (two months later after the sale) making me feeling like it's a scam."
That's likely a reference to a recent snafu where eBay apparently discovered they had a technical problem that supposedly prevented them correctly attributing ad fees going back as early as January 2025, they discovered and fixed the problem in May 2025, but didn't notify users - instead they simply backcharged the ad fees 30 days later with no warning or proactive explanation.
Liz Morton
The menu on the left side of the screen for Potential Bugs also shows some interesting entries, including "displays incorrect sales data for store level advertisements", "cannot click on campaign start link in offer email", "chart fails to update with current date on review your traffic page", and "cannot easily adjust existing ad rule, easier to create new one."
Yanes then showed how someone could mark that feedback as a "confirmed bug" which would then creates a ticket within Jira and eBay's other integrated tools to get the issue to the right people to solve and to communicate with the user who submitted the feedback.
She then showed how all of these feedback entries can then be grouped by theme and summarized with the help of AI to provide eBay better visibility on top issues to address.
Again, the demo shows some interesting insight into what eBay is seeing on their side, echoing much of the sentiment about advertising I hear from sellers on a near-daily basis.
For example, Airtable's "theme sentiment" analysis found over 150 mentions of issues with complexity and usability of eBay ad products, saying "many users find the advertising dashboard and campaigns setup process confusing and difficult to navigate. They express frustration with the lack of intuitive design and clear instructions."
There were also over 100 mentions of Lack of Transparency, saying "users are unclear about the costs associated with campaigns, how fees are calculated, and how to manage or end campaign effectively."
It also shows topics such as keyword and budget management, inadequate mobile accessibility, reporting and data inaccuracies and discrepancies, insufficient support, and skepticism about Promoted Listings effectiveness and ROI are all also top of mind for sellers based on feedback received.
Keep in mind, all of that was before eBay expanded there new attribution model for Promoted Listings General cost per sale ads to more countries at the end of June - resulting in a massive increase in ad fees but not sales - I can only imagine what that dashboard would look like today.
Liz Morton
Currently, the Airtable AI pilot program requires product managers to proactively access the dashboard to explore feedback received, ask questions of the AI assistant and explore how they can use that feedback to improve projects under their purview, but Yanes says the eventual goal is to connect it directly to eBay's product roadmap and to automate certain functionality like writing Product Requirement Documents to turn feedback into action.
So for all the sellers who've wondered what happens when you answer eBay survey's, post in the eBay community, or submit feedback through various pages on eBay's site (by clicking the question mark usually in the lower right corner) or app (shake app to report issues if enabled) - now you know where it goes.
Do you have feedback for Angela Yanes and the eBay Ads product team about the Promoted Listings advertising experience as a buyer or seller? Let us know in the comments below!
