Answer to Whether eBay Will Advertise on TV over Holidays

by: sasikat9

Ebay speak = We will depend on sellers driving buyers to the site via social media's.....

by: The End

Ebay is Crap.
It'll never be great again.
A needless tragedy.
Rich, Stupid, and Heartless murdered it.

by: Ric

This CEO is not waiting very long before becoming a laughingstock.

Past leadership destroyed the eBay brand, momentum and reputation with millions of buyers and sellers who have moved on and are so over eBay.

This digital advertising concept is destined to be a failure for one BIG reason.

The people who have abandoned eBay or who have been alienated by eBay's failed draconian policies are more engaged than ever in digital ( just not eBay ) and will not return.  

When they see eBay's digital advertising this holiday season is likely to produce one of the following results...

a) Remind those who have been alienated or who have abandoned eBay of the nightmare they escaped.

b) Move viewers to hysterical fits of laughter at the thought of resuming the broken eBay relationship.

For those who have never used eBay in the past, these digital advertisements will cement the thought that eBay has become irrelevant.

When eBay reports their disappointing 2015 Q4 numbers they will rely on three old stand by reasons and one new reason in an attempt to slough off poor marketplace performance...

1) The ongoing Google SEO issues

2) The profit decline driven by poor exchange rates on International sales.

3) The hack

and...

4) A poorly conceived marketing strategy destined to fail before ever being initiated.



It appears drought sellers have found themselves stuck in is going to last through another ill fated CEO's reign.

by: Patricia

I see there will be little change with this new boss....shooting their own foot will continue.  If i had their off shore money stash i would blitz the cable channels this holiday season.  Its cheap and it gets results!

by: Bloggo

Of course they won't advertise. Bloated salaries come first.

by: Rexford

$23 million approved by the Board to retain the last CEO for a few months---that would have been quite the advertising budget.

No advertising, no reconnecting with small sellers, no seller protection, business as usual and the punishments continue.

ecrater, ecrater, ecrater  

by: Bidonmine

While social-media is used extensively by the millennials, its usage drops off when between 30 and 40years and drops even more when going over 50years old.
My question is... who has the most disposable income and who buys more of the non-mainstream items?
Also, how come television can still charge top dollars for TV ads and still sell out (They wouldn't sell out if commercials were not delivering).
All of those Millennials using social media also watch all those TV shows directed at them!
And finally, remember, social media can destroy faster than it can create... at least with commercials you do not have immediate negatives flying around the internet.

by: boardwalk

Why does Ebay not just fix the core problem? If Google's SEO penalty needs to be addressed then that should be Ebays primary concern. KISS -Keep it simple stupid CEO

by: maxmad

It actually make good sense...

China shipping is very slow, and since most of the items on ebay are from china, that's not going to work out too well for ebay this holiday.


Holiday sales are going to end for ebay, in a couple of weeks, and they know it,

That's why they tried to make up with sellers last month, so they would list items for the holidays, sounds like it was a fail, and there's not much to advertise, other then the 99 cent ebay china items

ebay is pretty much finished this year, similar to their failed holiday results last year, nothing has changed.  

by: whipnet

I am in the tech industry and like many of my peers, we are NOT ON SOCIAL MEDIA.  

Google however has ads on 90% of the websites out there.  If you want to reach me, you'll have to do more than kiddie social media.

*

by: walkinwillie

Folks might think that fixing the SEO problem is easy but it isn't at all. Has anyone ever submitted a product feed to Google? Do you know how hugely restrictive it is?

Watermarks are forbidden, product identifiers required - unless it is one without one like in vintage collectibles - special characters cannot be used and no special promotion language can be used in the description like ''Free Shipping'' or ''Buy one get one free'', etc. Even if eBay could get the feed right as far as XML errors are concerned, several listings would be disallowed for transgressions listed above. Too many item transgressions and your whole feed is disallowed. I don't know that these are the problems facing eBay or if they are trying their best to work with Google.

Think of the eBay seller outrage if a competitor's items come up and theirs don't because of feed problems. Google has gone uber-strict on website content and their feeds - and I get it. The Google search has cleaned up considerably and very few of the ad sites come up high in the search results if at all. For all we know, eBay might be in negotiations with Google because you have to have a paid Adwords active campaign for the product feed to be searchable.

Because the eBay content is SO dynamic, submitting XML sitemaps of listings to Google is difficult because by the time Google crawls the map, a lot of the listings will no longer be active - which Google will not like. I just bet eBay has had a ton of trouble working with Google.

by: Volvo351

@sasikat9

Correct; all sales effort is the onus of the small seller; feeBay [mis-]management will sit on their fat arses and rake off a profit-killing FVF. Just to twist the knife, they'll take a "Final Value Fee" on your shipping COST, too. God forbid you have to ship something HEAVY cross-country - you will get screwed.

by: Volvo351

@Patricia

With cable media buys it's generally possible to target your ad right down to the ZIP CODE level. A marketing operation knows the demographics of that ZC including age concentrations and household income from census data. IOW, Mercedes Benz dealers don't buy exposure to Zip's that are "downscale." By now e'one is familiar with the constant parade of ads for denture adhesive, hemorrhoid ointments, etc on network news shows which attract an older audience. Today's media buys are way more sophisticated. However, "sophisticated" doesn't apply to feeBay. And, after all, why should it? The [mis-]management team is getting Filthy Rich just doing nothing. So, what could possibly be wrong?

by: toolguy

I want to see the "eBay Santa" come down the chimney with a bag of eBay bought items to put under the Christmas Tree.

And what ever happened to the Dale Jr. eBay car?

by: iheartjacksparrow

I think it's a mistake that eBay has chosen not to do TV advertising. As I've stated before, if eBay did even a portion of the advertising that GEICO and Progressive Insurance do, they could get people back to the site. I imagine they could get reasonably priced spots on some of the lesser cable channels (like Chiller), and local news shows in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. If people aren't reminded that eBay still exists, they'll shop on another site.

by: mcposty

I wouldn't bow to google either, google are just as big the idiots ebay is.

As for advertising, social media should not be the only way. Tv definitely is needed.

Ebay might as well close shop this is ridiculous how they think

by: toolguy

@iheartjacksparrow

"If people aren't reminded that eBay still exists, they'll shop on another site."

You mean like "Jet" or "Letgo"?

I've bought NOTHING from either site. . .But I have bought off eBay recently.

by: iheartjacksparrow

@toolguy - No, I mean Amazon, Wal-Mart, Kohls, Target, JC Penney, Macys, Sears... you know, companies that actually promote themselves on TV and radio, and have sites that aren't filled with glitches.

by: pace306

It5 doesnt matter where eBay advertises, their reputation is the worst at this point so it doesnt matter.

Come to eBay and sell your unwanted gifts, then let us screw you 10 different ways! Have an extra Apple iPhone ? Sell it on eBay and watch as we guarantee that your buyer will get it and you will get back a ROCK!

No one takes eBay seriously - not manufactorers, not the "industry", not the trade shows, not the magazines, not buyers and certainly NOT sellers.

People either laugh or are disgusted by eBays bad behavior.

As an example - my wife sees how often eBay screws me, how hard I have to work to "fight for whats mine" and just gets angry. She tells EVERYONE she meets NEVER to buy or sell on eBay and wont use eBay to buy anything from for her job.

I sit on Saturdays with friends of mine - each one a seller in a different category - Car Stereo, Watches, Baby (carriages etc), Scales, computer equipment - and ALL of us have the same horror stories about eBay. Yes (toolguy) there are issues with Amazon, but not like the seething hatred that eBay goes out of its way to create.

The shame is that it just doesnt have to be this way. Its done for no other reason besides greed. The MILLIONS they make just arent enough - just go screw some more sellers.

People here have said that the SEO for eBay is "so hard" to do ... funny though, my items show up in Google for my listings on Reverb, Rakuten and other places. What do they all know that eBay DOESNT?

Ric is right (as usual) about his analysis on the excuses eBay has about its business.

But imagine if they took the $20 million in advertising and gave some of it back to the sellers they stole from - the positive word of mouth, the positive feelings in would engender could fix alot of their wrong doings. But as usual its easier to give it to strangers for "virtually nothing" and then complain its Googles fault.

Even Forbes warns about eBay stocks "Without PayPal, eBay is a company that will grow more slowly. After all, in the last six months its marketplaces unit — which will remain after the spinoff — grew at 9.4% to $4.3 billion in net revenue with a 38% operating margin. Meanwhile, the payments unit grew much faster — almost 20% to $3.8 billion with a 25% operating margin.

Online auctions are not exactly a booming industry — and there’s plenty of competition from powerful rivals. Amazon, for example, enjoyed 27% growth in third-party merchant sales in April 2014 while eBay saw an 18% jump in fixed-price goods along with a 14% decline in auction-format sales that month."

"eBay shares are overvalued. Morningstar says that eBay trades at a Price/Earnings to Growth ratio of 1.6 — I think 1.0 is fair value. And that valuation does not take into account the subtraction of the profits from PayPal.

With Donahoe departing along with the spin off, there will be new management in place next year. Whether this gives hope to those who want to bet on eBay shares is above my pay grade. But I don’t see any compelling reason to buy eBay now."

Of course the TOOLGUYS of the world will say - its all in my head - its GOOD to take losses, its GOOD that eBay management has no practical experience in ecommerce and of course - Amazon sucks.

But the experts say otherwise "Lousy Changes in Seller Policy - A number changes in seller policy over the last few years has created much discontent among eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY)’s sellers. Competition is increasing, and newer market places are entering. eBay has no option but to keep its millions of sellers satisfied. Without them, the site won’t have healthy mix of products. And this could lead to an even greater loss of market share, but they don't.

So is it me or "the toolguys"?

by: Bloggo

“no special promotion language can be used in the description like “Free Shipping” or “Buy one get one free”
This doesn’t seem to be an issue for anybody else

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Parents For Sale, Buy One Get One Free Tee Shirts Zazzle