eBay to Add Links to Your Competitor's Similar Items to Some Item Pages

[amy]

eBay Move May Cause Sellers to Cutback on Google Advertising

eBay sellers have been moving toward Google AdWords advertising as a way to drive traffic to their listings. Now they say they may cease AdWord campaigns or use the AdWord advertisements to drive traffic to their own websites instead of to their eBay listings.

One seller asked: "Why would I want to have a "store" and promote it , like a business should, just to have eBay tell my customers to "look elsewhere" when they came to look at My Product?"

full article: http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m01/i27/s02

[bargainbloodhound]

However, one issue has been discovered tonight by our team after reading through the thread again. If you purchase keywords on the SE's (once again through Adwords or Overature) and point the link to a single item page (like the link above) then the treatment will actually appear. This is a use case that we did not take into account during the design of the product. It is not our intent to have you pay for keywords on a third party engine and send them to a page with the links to other eBay listings. We will fix this. I will have more info for you on Monday concerning timing. But remember, this is only the case when you point your paid search ad to an individual ebay item page.

Your paid AdWords and Overture ads that you point to specific listings will contain this link when this feature goes live (a fix won't be in place until a future date).  So, when you buy Google AdWords and point them to an item page you will be paying to advertise your competitors.

[sneakymagenta]

Auctionguild wrote something in January

ebaY is a convicted thief, and now once again they are showing themselves as liars. Back in 1999, when ebaY started putting banner ads on their site, they promised their US users that the one thing they would never do, under any circumstances, would be to put advertising on the seller's listing page. Since this space is paid for by the seller with listing and final value fees, it was only fair that the seller should be the only one allowed to use that space to advertise their items.

Each time ebaY introduced a new product that violated this promise, pressure would be brought to bear to remind ebaY of their promise, and ebaY would retrench and make the item optional at the seller's choice. For example, if a seller does not want other sellers like items to appear on their listings, they can opt out of the program. Their listings don't appear on other seller's pages and no other seller's items appear on theirs.

Once again ebaY is showing their willingness to lie to the seller that use their site, by adding advertising to the seller's listing page with their recent announcement that,

"we’ve recently made several technical changes to allow search engines (such as Google, Yahoo and MSN) to include eBay item pages in their search results. As part of this effort, we also need to help any new buyers -- who arrive at eBay through a search engine -- understand eBay and the breadth of product that is available.
This week we’re making a change to the top of the item page that only people visiting eBay from a search engine will see. This change adds a “welcome” message, a link to learn about eBay, and two links to additional items."

By putting links to other like items or anything else, not belonging to the seller, this is adding advertising to the seller’s listing page. To put it bluntly, it makes a liar out of ebaY, no matter what the excuse, and they need to reconsider whether they are going to blatantly lie to their sellers, after making promises they said they would never break. If they want to address the needs of new users, all they have to do is add a new user link to the toolbar appearing on every ebaY page – not violate their cast in concrete promises.

http://auctionguild.com/generic141.html

[amy]

Shhh--that promise was made in 1999.  You're not supposed to remember anything further back than this week's announcements. 

[bargainbloodhound]

Back in 1999, when ebaY started putting banner ads on their site, they promised their US users that the one thing they would never do, under any circumstances, would be to put advertising on the seller's listing page.

They also said "free is not a business model" 

[Anita]

I'll have to save that info for a post on the Stores Board for another day.  ;D