eBay Promoted Listings Publishing Problems Pop Up After New Ad Management Dashboard Added To App
eBay sellers report problems trying to enable Promoted Listings ads when creating new listings - is this latest glitch related to ongoing errors caused by new ad management dashboard in the eBay app experience?
Listings not getting promoted when using a custom amount on the mobile app
For the last several days now, I've noticed that my listings are failing to register as promoted, despite me clicking on "Promote Listing", then clicking on the option to input a custom amount underneath the 3 suggested amounts, and enter said amount, then clicking "List".
When I finish my listings and go back to the "Selling" page where my tasks to do are listed, all the listings I just did are there asking me to promote them. Then when i click the task, the text field is automatically populated withe a higher percentage than I had put it back when I originally set up the promotion parameters while making the listing.
This happening to anyone else??
Ebay Promotion % is Not Publishing Correctly
I am experiencing an issue where I add a promotional % to my listings, and it is shown when putting them live. However once live, these listings have no promotion % attached, and I am forced to re-add it post list.
I am having this issue as well, you set a percentage for promo listings and launch the item listing, and you get a popup error message saying there was a promoted listings problem and to revise the item again.
Also when you edit the item and revise it again, you get the same error message, but it does then update the promo listing percentage if you open the item a third time and check.
It seems to be getting worse. I have to redo and redo to finally get it to stick. Sometimes it appears that I have a higher listing ad percentage? This is all eating up free listing credits. I'm thinking about not listing anymore until it is fixed.
That last report is particularly alarming as the only thing worse than not having ads publish as they should would be to have them publish with a much higher ad rate percentage than the seller actually meant to apply!
eBay has been making several changes around ads recently and some sellers are wondering if this bug possibly got introduced when they started showing a "Boost" button in search results to prompt sellers to promote listings or increase their ad rates.
Liz Morton
And this isn't the only glitch currently impacting ads, eBay also introduced a new Promote On The Go experience allowing sellers to manage their Promoted Listings General campaigns in the app last week - but sellers say the data is all mixed up and doesn't match what shows in ads reports in the desktop experience.
Liz Morton
These glitches are likely to put wary sellers even more on edge as they wait for the other shoe to drop if/when eBay expands attribution changes recently rolled out in the UK, EU and Australia to the US.
Liz Morton
And lest we forget, eBay also recently had a "system error" (conveniently in eBay's favor) which supposedly caused them to miss attribution for previous sales that should have had ad fees charged, resulting in sellers being back charged for those fees months after the fact.
Liz Morton
And this is just the latest in a long line of far too frequent business-impacting technical issues that continue to plague the site.
Back in 2019, eBay and then CEO Devin Wenig faced activist investor pressure from Elliott Management calling for changes at the company, with constant site glitches and technical misexecution called out explicitly as one of the major problems with the platform.
Over 6 years later, it's shocking just how much of Elliott's "Enhancing eBay" plan still rings true today.
Wenig infamously said at eBay Open 2018 that technical glitches are unacceptable and really pissed him off.
eBay has since removed the video they had posted on YouTube of the eBay Open 2018 Q&A segment, but the interviewer asked:
There've been a lot of site glitches recently on eBay. What are you guys doing to get rid of them?
And Wenig responded:
Here's the simple answer - unacceptable, unacceptable. And we're making a lot of changes. When you make changes there are times that things happen but that's not an excuse and it's not ok with me and this summer in particular there have been a number of issues that directly impacted sellers like people not being able to see their view counts and a few other things and it's just not ok.
I'm extremely proud of a lot of things we've done, I'm not proud of that and in fact I hold my team accountable and it's not important, it's an internal matter but, we made changes to people and teams because shipping product that isn't ready is not ok. It's not ok with me and it's not ok with my team.
So the short answer is it's not like we don't get it. We are making a lot of changes and I want to make those changes, we need to make those changes, but making changes and then having to back up and fix things is not cool and I totally get it. Most of the issues from this summer have now been remedied but I was pissed off.
Mazen Rawashdeh was Chief Infrastructure and Architecture Officer at the time, but somehow managed to escape the wrath of a "pissed off" Wenig and was promoted to Chief Technology Officer, a title he still retains today.
As eBay's quarterly financial reports continue to show that Promoted Listings ads are a critical revenue driver for the company, these glitches could attract renewed investor scrutiny.
Are you experiencing errors when trying to promote your listings on eBay? Let us know in the comments below!
