shorebreak - 12:49 am on Oct 8, 2008 (gmt 0)

EBay built its brand on the back of webmasters as well through affiliate programs - which have now gone on to EPN (with many people earning much less)..

Whether affiliates like it or not, their business model is primarily that of an opportunistic placeholder in the SERPs (both paid & organic) until the end-merchant arrives. Affiliates can and should earn less over time, not more and not even the same. Valueclick was a tracking stock for the growth of search engine marketing, but that's no longer the case, just as it's no longer the case that merchants *need* affiliates the way they did 3-4 years ago.

Google also built its brand on good faith from webmasters and now look to be trying to push webmasters aside to cater to corporates.

IMO that's hogwash. You could just as easily say that affiliates built their business on the opportunity that eBay's business model afforded them. What you had/have with eBay is a business relationship that apparently doesn't satisfy eBay anymore.

I must be hallucinating. It almost seems as if you're defending an ad for used toilet paper. USED TOILET PAPER!

That's exactly what I'm doing. There was a Business Week article 2-3 years ago talking about how eBay knows not only what the initial value of a new buyer or seller, but also the long-term value of each type of customer that comes in. Their tracking systems are incredibly sophisticated *compared to most advertisers* and for the same reason we're talking about these ads, eBay knows shockingly irrelevant ads work, including from an ROI perspective.

Another incorrect statement as we were the ones who were doing the paid search. Then they banned us from doing so and look how effectively they're spending their money now.

eBay struggling as a company now and their change in attitude towards affiliates are not necessarily linked causally. EBay built its network effect in the early 2000's, and simply had the misfortune to have seen their network effect [justly] eclipsed by the network effect of search.

eBay did not build their brand with PPC - they built it by being the first, and that is why the mom and pop and car boot market made them.

You obviously don't know just how much money eBay spent on paid search, starting with a *massive* buy on RealNames back in 2000, or the % of ACRUs paid search delivered in eBay's first 4 years. People at eBay have told me that their own paid search campaigns were >40% of new ACRUs for several years.