eBay Opens Bundle Discounts To All Sellers Ahead Of Holiday Season
eBay is opening its new bundle discount feature to all sellers and rolling out additional Seller Hub and order management updates as it urges merchants to get an early start on holiday preparations.
The updates were detailed during an August seller webinar alongside eBay's 2026 Seller Holiday Playbook, based on a survey of 2,000 US shoppers about pricing, discovery, promotions and shopping plans.
Value Added Resource first reported earlier this month that bundle discounts were appearing for some sellers in a phased rollout, allowing automatic percentage discounts when buyers purchase multiple items from the same seller.
Evan Swanson from eBay's B2C product team now says access is expanding across the marketplace.
"That's why we are launching bundle discounts. It's available to all sellers starting this week."
Sellers can set different percentage discounts for two, three and four or more items. The offer appears on eligible listings, then eBay recommends additional products from the seller's inventory after a buyer adds something to their cart.
Swanson said those recommendations use buyer attributes including categories they have shopped in and products they have previously purchased.
Once enabled, the promotion applies across eligible inventory by default and new eligible listings are automatically added. Sellers can currently exclude up to 100 individual listings, with Swanson saying eBay may consider easier category-level exclusions in the future.
That broad default was one of the potential concerns VAR flagged when the feature first began rolling out, particularly for sellers with varying margins or inventory they may not want discounted together. The earlier rollout also revealed unusual partial return calculations, with eBay repricing items a buyer keeps if a return drops the order into a lower discount tier.
Liz Morton
Swanson said bundles are particularly suited to smaller products that can ship together, calling out collectibles and trading cards as areas where eBay has "seen a huge uptick" while saying the company is also "really focused on lower ASP fashion."
Bundle discounts can stack with sale events because those promotions lower the underlying item price, but they do not stack with coupons or order discounts. Swanson also said the current feature is "just the beginning."
eBay is also adding new Listings and Orders summary modules to Seller Hub Overview over the next few weeks, providing direct access to drafts, offers, bids and orders ready to ship.
Bill MacEwen, who leads eBay's post-listing product experience, said sellers should expect additional changes to the Overview page over the coming months.
Active Listings is also getting recommendations for individual items, including suggestions to bring inactive or out-of-stock listings back online and prompts to respond to buyer messages and offers. Some actions can be completed without leaving the page, including replying to buyer messages through an inline side panel.
eBay has also expanded support for 4x6 thermal printers, allowing shipping labels, packing slips and order receipts to be printed in the same job through Seller Hub or the eBay app.
A new combined shipping tag will flag when the same buyer has placed multiple orders, allowing sellers to select those orders and purchase a single shipping label.
MacEwen clarified that orders can be combined even when buyers completed separate checkouts and regardless of how shipping was originally charged on each transaction.
Much of eBay's Holiday Playbook focuses on preparing listings before Black Friday, with 57% of surveyed shoppers saying they expect to start holiday shopping by October or earlier.
More than half compare prices across sites before buying, while 26% expect to spend more this year. Clear product images and competitive pricing ranked as the two most important factors when buying online.
More than half of shoppers said they browse for inspiration, while 32% find holiday gift ideas through search engines. The playbook pairs that finding with a recommendation to use Promoted Offsite to reach shoppers on Google and other sites.
eBay is also encouraging sellers to consider livestreaming, though its own research shows live shopping still has significant room to grow. Just 15% of surveyed shoppers said they had purchased during a livestream on a marketplace, while 72% were either unaware of live shopping or had seen it without using it.
eBay said Live GMV grew approximately eightfold year-over-year in Q2, but the company still has not disclosed total Live GMV, active buyer or seller counts, transaction volume or other figures needed to put that growth into perspective.
Liz Morton
The Holiday Playbook repeatedly directs sellers toward Promoted Listings, Promoted Stores and Promoted Offsite, but Dallen McKee, a senior manager in eBay's account management program, was more explicit when asked what sellers should prioritize.
Advertising, like, it's just a no-brainer.
He identified advertising, competitive pricing, item specifics and titles as key factors for visibility, calling advertising "crucial" and saying item specifics "provide a big boost in your visibility."
For Promoted Listings General and Priority, the playbook highlights more than 100% and 240% more impressions, respectively, than non-promoted items on average, but does not provide comparable figures for increased sales or conversion.
More impressions don't necessarily tell sellers whether that additional ad spend resulted in sales they otherwise would not have made. That's become harder to judge since eBay changed General attribution in January, allowing an ad fee when any buyer clicked the promoted listing within the previous 30 days, even if someone else ultimately makes the purchase.
First-party advertising generated $570 million in Q2, up 25% year-over-year, with advertising revenue reaching a record 2.7% of GMV. Management has also said its long-running 3% target should now be viewed as a midterm milestone rather than a ceiling.
VAR has also covered eBay's Easy Boost feature, which makes it easier to place an entire account into a blanket Promoted Listings General strategy, as well as new individual listing exclusions for rule-based campaigns.
Liz Morton
Promoted Offsite does not currently let sellers exclude individual listings. Asked whether that will change, Teresa Chuang from eBay Advertising said the company is exploring better back-end controls that could allow sellers to prioritize or deprioritize listings, but stopped short of promising direct exclusions.
Promoted Offsite still gives sellers limited control over which listings are advertised, even as eBay is urging them to make paid promotion a regular part of their holiday strategy.
Watch the full webinar replay on YouTube and let us know in the comments below what you're doing to prepare for the 2026 holiday selling season!
