eBay Promoted Listings Ad Attribution Money Grab Expands To UK, Australia, Italy, France & Spain
UPDATE 6-4-25
eBay UK community staff have confirmed that once the new attribution model goes into effect, 1 click on a Promoted Listings General ad for a multi-quantity item will set up all subsequent sales of that item to be charged the ad fee for the next 30 days - assuming the item is still enrolled in an active campaign at the time of those subsequent sales.
eBay is making major changes to Promoted Listings ad attribution in UK, Australia, Italy, France and Spain that will massively expand the number of sales which will collect ad fees as revenue generating desperation grows.
Sellers in those locations were informed today that as of June 24,2025, Promoted Listings General cost per sale ad fees will be assessed for any sale where any buyer clicked on the promoted version of an item - even if that isn't the buyer who ultimately ends up making the purchase!
Starting June 24th, 2025, for items listed on ebay.co.uk, ebay.com.au, ebay.fr, ebay.it, and ebay.es: eBay will report an Attributed sale from a general campaign when a buyer purchases the same item that was featured in the ad that was clicked on by any buyer in the most recent 30 days.
The ad fee is charged when a buyer purchases the promoted item from a general ad that any buyer clicked on in the most recent 30 days. The item must be promoted at the time of click and the time of sale. The ad fee is based on the ad rate in effect at the time of the sale.
Yes, you read that right - if an ad for an item has been clicked on by any buyer in the last 30 days, the seller will be charged the ad fee when that item sells - even if it ends up being purchased by a completely different buyer who never clicked on the ad.
And as ad rates and the number of sales that incur ad fees continues to rise and eat into profit margins, sellers will likely bake some or all of that increased cost into their product prices.
eBay will then be collecting their normal Final Value Fee percentage as well as the ad rate percentage on that increased product price, giving them a larger take rate on the total sale than they would have otherwise.
Sellers with multiple quantities of the same item will be hit particularly hard by this change - if you have 100 of an item in stock, all it takes is a single click by one person on the ad for that item and every sale of that item for the next 30 days will have the ad fee attached.
And of course if at any point during that 30 days, there is another click on the ad for that item, that timeframe then extends 30 days from that click - and on and on we go.
The wording of this update is also a little confusing in the way it uses the word "buyer" - for clarity, eBay really should have simply said "user" as anyone with an active account in good standing is a potential buyer, even if that account has historically only been used for selling, not to mention that even those who don't have an account registered and are just browsing the site not logged in can and do click on Promoted Listings ads.
Many sellers have raised concerns about the prospect of click fraud/other sellers maliciously clicking on competitor ads to trigger ad fees on subsequent sales, which is an understandable fear.
eBay has said they have systems in place to detect and mitigate click fraud, but what about "non-malicious but still no intent to buy" clicks?
For example, many sellers will search and browse other sellers' items when they are doing item research and price comparisons or looking for a similar item to use to "sell one like this" from - and may click on ads in the process if eBay is showing the promoted version of an item in search.
eBay also recently made a change that moves category breadcrumbs which used to be displayed on the top of the page down to the bottom, forcing users to scroll past many rows of ads in the process.
Liz Morton
As part of this design change, as you scroll down the page trying to get to the bottom, eBay suddenly adds even more rows of sponsored listings ads, increasing the chance that the user may either intentionally or unintentionally click on one.
In this video clip you can see that as I scrolled down the page with my cursor in the bottom right, what was initially blank space at the end loaded another row of items.
Because the title of that row is "Explore related items" with the word "sponsored" underneath it, that means every item shown in that row is a Promoted Listings ad and if I had accidentally clicked where my cursor ended up after the new ads loaded, that would have counted as a click for attribution.
Those are just a few ways that non-malicious but still no intent to buy clicks may occur on your Promoted Listings and under this new attribution model, that will make it much more likely you will end up paying the ad fee when that item sells, even if the eventual actual buyer never clicked on an ad for it - and I honestly believe that is much bigger problem than click fraud.
The update also changes the time frame in which an ad fee will apply. Previously, if you ended an ad campaign, you could still be charged an ad fee if a sale occurred within 30 days of the last click.
Now the ad campaign still has to be active for the attribution to count, so ending a campaign stops the possibility of being charged the fee.
That may be at least some small consolation, but it's likely to be far outweighed by the fact that many more sales will now have ad fees assessed against them - which is exactly what happened when eBay made this same change in Germany in February.
Liz Morton
Just a week and half into the attribution changes for Germany, sellers were already seeing ad attribution rates rising to 80% or more as a result of this massive expansion of how eBay decides whether an ad fee will apply on a sale.
Sellers shared their experiences in the eBay.de community forum:
samples:
52% of my sales on 01.11.2024 calculated with ads
51% of my sales on December 19, 2024 were calculated with ads
63% of my sales on February 22, 2024 were calculated with ads
86% of my sales today (so far 5:20pm) 02/26/25 calculated with ads.
I haven't changed much in this time. For me this is a rip-off with NO added value!
This seller provided a screenshot of their ad dashboard report, showing in the days starting from February 26th (the day the new attribution policy went into effect), almost every sale was attributed to Promoted Listings (green) with only a tiny amount of organic sales (blue) compared to previous days under the old attribution model.
without words...see screenshot...speaks for itself...
Since this update changes eBay Promoted Listings ad attribution to count "when a buyer purchases the same item advertised in the ad clicked by any buyer in the last 30 days", the sale no longer needs to be attached to an actual click on an ad and these additional ad attributions do not represent additional sales or increased value to the seller in any way.
Germany is often used as a testing ground for policies and new features that eventually find their way to other markets - for example, when eBay dropped their Promoted Listings Express ad offering and added auctions to Promoted Listings Basic/ General instead, they started in Germany - so it is disappointing but not surprising to see this new policy expanding and won't be surprising if it eventually comes to the US site as well.
We've already seen Promoted Listings ad rates jacked up with no notice to sellers in the weeks leading up to Black Friday and the busy holiday shopping period.
First, sellers noticed in early November that the Promoted Listings Dynamic ad rate minimum had been raised from 2% to 5% with no notice to sellers.
Liz Morton
Then, even more alarmingly, eBay also instituted a massive 10X minimum bid increase on Promoted Listings Priority cost per click ads, going from $0.02 to $0.20 per click - again with no notice to sellers.
When eBay was publicly called out for these shady tactics, they tried to cover their tracks by issuing a Marketing Terms Update which allows them much more wiggle room to make future ad rate and attribution changes at any time with no notice to sellers required.
Liz Morton
eBay's Q1 2025 earnings call showed that the company's insatiable appetite for ever increasing ad revenue is not going away any time soon, but it also showed that sellers' willingness to participate may be hitting a wall.
Liz Morton
First party ads (all of the various seller paid Promoted Listing ad products including cost per sale, cost per click, store display ads, and offsite ads) contributed $418M in revenue in Q1.
That represents 14% year over year growth but notably is down from $434M in Q4, which could indicate that changes eBay made to ratchet up minimum rates have slowed adoption rates and caused sellers to pull back on advertising as it continues to eat further into their profit margins.
Interestingly, eBay made a change to the Ad Revenue chart in their earnings presentation, adding a new metric for "Off-Platform Ads" to track ad revenue from subsidiaries like TCGPlayer and Qoo10 in Japan, which likely means those sites are soon to see an influx of ads as well.
Liz Morton
This new ad attribution model is simply a giant money grab on eBay's part to take more ad fees on dwindling sales and will likely face particularly harsh backlash in the UK where sellers are already grappling with the fallout of other massive changes including Simple Delivery managed shipping and a Buyer Protection Fee on private sales.
@AskeBay @eBay_UK @eBay NO! You must backtrack this - it's scandalous! This pretty much GUARANTEES eBay will charge their ad fee on every sale of a promoted product. #ebay @ValueAddedRS @unsuckEBAY pic.twitter.com/mTGOmi2wxU
— Dan (@srbpower) May 23, 2025
And to add insult to injury, apparently eBay hosted a Roadshow event with UK sellers yesterday, complete with a session on Promoted Listings ads, and didn't breath one word about the attribution bombshell they knew they would be dropping today because they were too cowardly to face sellers' reactions in person.
How very disappointing but not at all surprising eBay had in person event w/ UK sellers yesterday, complete w/ session about Ads, & didn't breath one word about attribution bombshell they knew they were going to drop today.🤦♀️@eBay_UK @AskeBay this is a terrible look. 👎$EBAY https://t.co/lV7cQbTZw6
— Liz Morton ~ Value Added Resource (@ValueAddedRS) May 23, 2025
Tucked inside the same update, eBay is also making changes to give Promoted Listings Priority ads exclusive access to the top spot in search.
When eBay rolled out Promoted Listings cost per click ads (previously called Advanced, now called Priority) in 2021, they were originally only eligible to be shown in the 1st ad slot in search, then that expanded to the top 4 slots in 2022, then top 4 plus 3 other placements in search in 2023, and finally they became eligible to be shown in any ad spot in search results and ad modules on listing pages as well.
But none of those were ever "exclusive" placements - eBay only said that Priority ads would get "priority access" to those spots, which meant in most scenarios they would get preferential placement vs General cost per sale ads but that didn't prevent General ads from possibly being displayed in one of those spots if there wasn't a Priority ad to take precedence for a particular search.
With this new update in Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, and Australia, the top ad spot in search will now be reserved exclusively for Priority cost per click ads and General cost per sale ads will never be eligible for the top spot, period.
If there is no Priority ad to show for a given search, eBay will make the top spot an organic result instead, according to an eBay Ads blog post about the update.
Will these changes be the final straw that causes sellers to revolt and stop using Promoted Listings all together?
What do you think of eBay's new ad attribution model? Will you continue to use Promoted Listings cost per sale ads if these changes come to the US as well? Let us know in the comments below!
