eBay Targets Ambassador Program & eBay Live With Custom Promoted Stores Ad Updates
eBay's insatiable appetite for increasing advertising revenue continues as update to Promoted Stores offering expands ad capabilities to Ambassador affiliate program influencer storefronts and eBay Live livestream shopping events.
The news was tucked inside of today's botched January 2026 Seller News update which saw the US update accidentally released early and then removed - but the update for sellers in Australia gives us a look into what eBay has planned for Promoted Stores ads.
Liz Morton
Promoted Stores ads are a cost per click option originally launched in 2022, allowing sellers to promote their Store pages or coupons.
Initially much of the campaign creation for Promoted Stores was automatically handled by eBay, with sellers unable to select which items to promote or specific categories to feature - but now that's changing with Promoted Stores Custom.
What you need to know
Promoted Stores Custom is designed to give you more creative control and help you highlight the inventory that matters most to your business. You can now choose both the listings you want to feature in your ads and the exact Store page buyers land on.How it works
Promoted Stores Custom gives you the flexibility to tailor your ads from start to finish:
- Select up to 1,000 listings, including ten featured items to showcase in your ads
- Choose a custom landing page option for your Store, such as a sales event page, a curated collection, an influencer-led page or an eBay Live event page
That last point is particularly important - previously, sellers could only link Promoted Stores ads to Store category pages or an active coupon, but now they can also use it to promote sales event pages, curated collections, influencer-led pages or an eBay Live event page.
Curated collections likely refers to a new section in Stores that sellers noticed in November. The initial testing featured random items that were not directly selected by sellers and appeared to be organic placements, but many sellers suspected eBay's eventual goal was to introduce some kind of ad product related to these Curated Finds modules.
Liz Morton
Presumably, "influencer-led pages" refers to these curated pages that influencers can set up but it may also include eBay's Ambassador storefronts that affiliate program members can set up without actually having a selling account on the platform.
Liz Morton
eBay introduced the Ambassador program last year, offering affiliates the opportunity to earn up to 7.5% commission on eligible sales, while killing off the eBay Partner Network Seller Incentive which had previously allowed sellers to essentially sell their own items fee-free if the purchase came through an affiliate link.
Liz Morton
Finding a way to enable cost per click ads that these influencers can be enticed to use to direct onsite traffic to their Ambassador storefronts is a clever move on eBay's part, but will savvy affiliates be willing to pay for ads that will eat into their overall earnings?
It's also very interesting that eBay has chosen to launch this offering on the same day that controversial changes to Promoted Listings General cost per sale ads went into effect, especially since sellers have raised concerns about unfair double standards in attribution between Promoted Listings ads and the Ambassador affiliate program.
Liz Morton
eBay is also extending Promoted Stores ad eligibility to eBay Live events, marking the first step in ad monetization for eBay's livestream shopping experience.
eBay Live launched over 3 years ago in the US and has been live for over a year in the UK as well, but sellers have been frustrated with the slow pace of rollout and restrictive requirements that blocked many from participating - driving many into the arms of competing platforms like Whatnot, Poshmark and TikTok.
In recent months, eBay has been belatedly racing to catch up to those competitors with further European expansion and an official launch in Australia in December, so it's no surprise that finding a way to increase ad revenue through live shopping is also a high priority for the platform.
Liz Morton
At Investor Day in 2022, eBay forecasted they expected to double ad revenue to $2 Billion by 2025.
But the company has struggled to meet that goal, having to resort to significant discounting tactics to counter lagging seller adoption of cost per click ads while many categories appear to be reaching a saturation point for Promoted Listings General cost per sale ads - which may be one reason eBay has introduced a new metric to measure ad revenue from subsidiary businesses like TCGPlayer and Qoo10 in earnings reports.
Liz Morton
As of Q3 2025, eBay had reported ~$1.37B in first party ad revenue (total of all Promoted Listings ad offerings), meaning they'll have to have brought in ~$630 Million in Q4 to make that Investor Day 2022 prediction.
While changes to monthly budget pacing for Promoted Priority and Stores cost per click campaigns and Promoted General ad attribution in UK, EU, and Australia will likely give eBay a bit of ad rev bump for the Q4 report, it seems unlikely to be enough to meet those previous projections.
Liz Morton
Those same attribution policies went into effect for the US and Canada today, but any impact (positive or negative) from that expansion won't be reflected until the Q1 2025 earnings report.
Liz Morton
If eBay misses that $2 Billion ad revenue projection, it could spook investors - for example, Jefferies downgraded the company to "underperform" from "hold" in December 2024, citing concerns about slowing ad revenue growth and possible headwinds in cross border trade from China.
Liz Morton
The stock has rebounded since then and recently hit a new all time high in August 2025, but if Q4/full year results are less than impressive when eBay reports in mid to late February, that trajectory could reverse quickly.
A recent job ad on eBay's career page indicates the company is taking ad strategy inspiration from Amazon, but as always the devil is in the details and execution - and eBay may be severely overestimating seller tolerance for the continued Promoted Listings money grab.
Liz Morton
