Quiet eBay Marketing Terms Update Hints At Video Ads, Item Comparison Features Coming Soon
UPDATE 2-3-26
eBay Item Compare has been spotted in the wild, with early testing raising questions about data accuracy and ad-driven intent.
Details:
Liz Morton
In a quiet update to its Marketing Terms, eBay appears to be laying the groundwork for video advertising and a new “compare item” feature - changes that may also signal broader plans to introduce more assistive, agentic AI tools for buyers.
The quiet update was posted today, February 2, 2026 though it appears someone at eBay may have made a typo on the year (the Internet Wayback Machine Internet Archive shows as recently as November 12, 2025 this page was still showing the old effective date of January 15, 2025).
The Marketing Terms for the UK, Canada, and Australia were also updated at the same time with similar changes.
As always, sellers are encouraged to read the entire updated terms carefully, but Value Added Resource has you covered with a side by side comparison highlighting some key changes.
Disclaimer: comparisons are made using both automated and manual methods and are provided for informational purposes only - no warranty of completeness or accuracy is expressed or implied and users are advised to do their own due diligence.
Content & Attribution Actions
eBay has amended their Marketing Terms to include new types of content which may be used for ads or actions which may trigger ad attribution for listings that are enrolled in any of the Promoted Listings cost per click or cost per sale advertising offerings - specifically calling out videos and a new feature called "item compare."
Old Version:
You expressly agree that your listings will be promoted via Ads. Ads may include text, graphics, a listing title, a listing description or other features and functionality eBay may make available, associate with or incorporate into your listing (e.g., add to watchlist, add to cart, quick view, or other interactive functionality).
You will designate or provide eBay with text, logos, images, URLs and other content ("Content") for the Ads, which Content may be derived from listings on the applicable eBay property.
New Version:
You expressly agree that your listings will be promoted via Ads. Ads may include text, graphics, videos, a listing title, a listing description or other features and functionality eBay may make available, associate with or incorporate into your listing (e.g., add to watchlist, add to cart, quick view, item compare, or other interactive functionality).
You will designate or provide eBay with text, logos, images, videos, URLs and/or other content ("Content") for the Ads, which Content may be derived from listings on the applicable eBay property.
This section also added a new segment that says:
You agree that you are solely responsible for any Ad or Content that is provided to eBay by you or on your behalf,and that no such Ad or Content will contain sensitive personal data.
And eBay also added a reference to "item compare" under Cost Per Click ads as well.
Old Version:
...a click includes (without limitation) any interaction with your Ad (e.g., add to watchlist, add to cart, quick view, or other interactive functionality).
New Version:
...a click includes (without limitation) any interaction with your Ad (e.g., add to watchlist, add to cart, quick view, item compare, or other interactive functionality).
What Does It Mean For Sellers?
While the dry legalese of these marketing terms doesn't give a lot of specifics, here's what these additions could potentially mean for sellers.
Videos
eBay previously introduced AI capabilities in their social sharing tool to help sellers create videos to be posted on YouTube or Tik Tok - but that feature was temporarily "paused" in October 2025 as the platform said they were "re-evaluating marketing tools for sellers."
Liz Morton
Adding videos as a type of content in the Marketing Terms could be a sign that eBay may soon bring this feature back, either through the social selling tool or in a different format.
It could also be connected to eBay's recent announcement expanding the Promoted Stores offering to include sales event pages, curated collections, influencer-led pages or an eBay Live event pages.
Liz Morton
While the announced Custom Promoted Stores functionality is not yet actually available to sellers, the ability to use videos instead of just static images for these ads would be very useful - especially when promoting eBay Live events.
Or the video reference could simply be eBay catching up to existing features and design functionality - for example the way that items which have videos may have those videos auto-play as the default thumbnail in search and on listing pages.
Item Compare
The previous Marketing Terms update which went into effect in January 2025 added "add to cart" and "quick view" to the list of actions that might trigger ad attribution, in addition to "add to watch list."
That meant that if buyers click a heart icon to add an item to their watch list, or use any of the add to cart or quick view options eBay has tested over the last few years that allow buyers to go directly to checkout without viewing the item page - those actions may be counted for the purposes of charging ad fees.
Liz Morton
Now eBay has also added something called "Item Compare" to the list and while they don't give any details about how exactly that feature will work, it's clear eBay intends to provide some way for buyers to compare similar items and that if they purchase an item promoted through this feature, it will count for ad attribution.
Value Added Resource Prediction: eBay may be gearing up to release their long in development agentic AI tool to more buyers, with item comparison being baked into the discovery and shopping experience.
eBay began hyping buyer-facing Agentic AI in May 2025 but it was an extremely limited beta-test that is still currently only available to a very small percentage of app users.
Liz Morton
Side note: I've personally only spoken to one person who has it in their app and they were not impressed - they reached out to me asking if I knew how they could turn it off because the icon got in the way and blocked their usual workflow.
But eBay's recent User Agreement update has the internet buzzing because of it's very carefully worded section banning "unauthorized" AI "buy for me" agents and scrapping bots.
Liz Morton
Industry observers suggested that rather than being an outright rejection of agentic AI, this move likely signals eBay is simply blocking outside/unauthorized programs - with the eventual goal to introduce an exclusive eBay created and controlled agentic experience more broadly across platform.
Product comparisons are a natural use case for AI, so it will not be surprising if this ends up being part of eBay's larger agentic plans, but it's also possible they could integrate "Item Compare" in more traditional ways in search and on item pages as well.
Other marketplaces already provide a template for what this could look like - for example, Amazon often shows a module on product pages that compares features, price points, reviews, and more across similar items.
And Etsy introduced their own take on "Compare To Similar Items" in 2024, much to the dismay of sellers who were unhappy about the platform directing potential buyers to competing listings from other sellers.
Liz Morton
eBay could easily do something similar in existing ad module sections on item pages - either in this prime real estate above the product description or in any of the sections further down the page that currently display hundreds of competing listings.
It will be interesting to see how exactly eBay intends to implement "Item Compare" to ensure the items being compared really are similar - especially since condition and other details can vary wildly from one listing to the next.
Either way, it's clear that whatever eBay has in mind, it will likely lead to more ad fees for sellers.
Editor's note: after publishing, a VAR reader brought to my attention this YouTube video from Flippin Hippos which indicates Item Compare was supposed to launch in January and is initially going to be for items in Electronics categories.
So, what's new? Introducing intelligent item comparison.
This will only be launched in the electronics categories. It's a new side by side item comparison experience launched on search in electronics. Buyers will be able to compare up to three listings without leaving search results.
It makes returns and shipping cost visibility a key differentiator when price and specs are similar and reduces buyer friction and decision fatigue.
So, this is great for buyers. It's a little too much like Amazon coming from a reseller opinion, but as a buyer, I guess that's pretty cool.
Replacing Marketing Services
The final change in eBay's Marketing Terms is a new clause which allows eBay to automatically transfer settings for bids, budgets, and campaigns in the event they replace one marketing service with a similar marketing service.
In the event we replace a Marketing Service with a substantially similar Marketing Service, you authorize us to transfer your bids, budgets, campaigns and other relevant settings to that modified Marketing Service, to the extent transferable for the defaults and features of the new or modified Marketing Service.
We will provide notice as set forth below in the event of any such transfer.
Again, that does not give specifics, but my guess is this is also related to last month's announcement about Custom Promoted Stores.
It's possible that the reason the functionality is not available yet is that eBay has to "replace" the current Promoted Stores offering with the new "Custom" Promoted Stores offering, which may require transferring settings from existing campaigns - and they needed this update to provide the legal cover to do so.
And if you're wondering why eBay did not post an announcement in the community forums or email users about these changes - that's because during the last update they granted themselves more wiggle room to simply post changes on the site when they go into effect without needing to provide any additional notice.
Liz Morton
The move comes as eBay has also been making controversial changes to how cost per click ad budgets work and Promoted Listings General cost per sale ad attribution in their initiable quest to squeeze more ad revenue out of sellers and ratchet up quarterly take rates.
Liz Morton
What do you think of eBay's new Marketing Terms? Let us know in the comments below!
