To eBay or not to eBay

Do you block ads from eBay and other auction sites?

[m0nty]

I was just wondering, as my site gets a fair amount of ads from eBay, whether the general practice amongst Webmasters here is to block eBay ads or welcome them. Are they traditionally high earners, or are they low-CPC bottom-feeders which should be banished? Is it dependent on your keyword, or is there a general consensus?

[wildfiction]

Interesting question. Do you block low CPC payers on your site and try to maintain site 'stickiness' in the hope that the person browsing the site will eventually exit through a higher CPC ad on another page...

OR

Do you accept that Google will always serve up the highest CPC ads and if that's all your page is worth now then that's better than nothing and all the pennies will add up...

[Longhaired Genius]

Ebay ads on my site have been nonsensical and irritating so I ban them regardless of revenue because I can't bear to look at them.

[Visit Thailand]

I banned as many of the ebay domains I could think of, but am sure I missed a few extensions.

[MichaelCrawford]

I saw an ad when searching google a little while ago that said you could be pagerank on eBay. How much do you suppose I'd have to bid?

[helleborine]

Ban! Ban!

I can't bear to look at them either... buy penguin fruit now, new and used penguin fruit!

Urgh.

My fear - and this is not backed by scientific experimentation - is that if visitors see this nonsense in your ad tower, they won't look at the other ads, and will develop a habit of never looking over time.

[1milehgh80210]

I saw a "used" vacation ad the other day LOL.

[Jon_King]

Ebay blocked here. Don't know about the revenue but I suspect its low although I can't say I've seen a change in overall revenue after they were filtered out.

[sailorjwd]

I often block ebay ads.. But for me when I see an Ebay ad I know something is wrong with the page since Ebay ads are often below 10 cents a click. The usual problem is that google is playing with the ad mix for the page and doesn't have it quite right. They mentioned that this can happen when they get a big influx of advertisers and it will take a few days for it to work itself out and show the proper ads.

I suspect we'll see more of this as new advertisers come on line with the new cpm, etc features.

[jetteroheller]

I block Ebay, affliate only and scrapper sites, MLM

More than 90 in the URL Filter

[MichaelCrawford]

What are all the ebay domains? And any others that you recommend?

I don't block anything, but I'm getting very good performance from one popular page.

[MichaelCrawford]

Well, I just found one to block. Right on one of MY articles (one where I'd intended to remove the adsense, because it's not performing), there is an ad that says:

Company Profile
MyCompany $29.95 per report - $49.95
monthly
www.example.com

Where "MyCompany" is the name of MY company!

How in the!@@# did THAT show up on my site?

I'm going to go block their domain now.

[icedowl]

After seeing "used cake icing", eBay is never coming back on my sites. Eeuwww!

[wsp9]

I'm sure many of you already knows this; but when filtering specific ads from your site, don't rely on using the url you see displayed on the ad. Use the "Google Adsense Preview Tool" from the IE right click menu to get the real URL. Many of these advertisers get away with displaying ebay.com or any url they want and then the ad takes the user to an intermediary website(whatever.com) and then redirects the user to ebay. So, filtering out ebay.com won't get rid of those ads necessarily. You need to filter out that intermediary tracking website.

[CodeJockey]

We block based on "Used Dog Biscuits" and other not so relevant ads.

The real reason for all of the eBay ads is the $20.00 per sign-up eBay is offering through their affiliate program for the first 500 sign-ups per month (plus an incentive bonus). This rises to $45.00 per sign-up if you get 7,500 per month (plus incentive).

Pay out a couple of pennies per click to make $20.00. Seems like a deal to me.

[david_uk]

BAN

I too think the ads for non existant products only serve to knock a site's credibility. New & used Buckingham Palace (all sizes). I rest my case.

[Jenstar]

I don't filter them here, but I have never seen any of the wildly irrelevant eBay ads that some sites get. I strictly use it as a competitive filter only.

[swa66]

Those ebay, amazon and the like ads are NOT from ebay nor amazon, but from affiliates that pose as the big known names.
Therefore it's not ebay.com, ebay.* that needs to be blocked but you need to play whack-a-mole with the affiliates doing this.

It would be good if the displayed URL would match the actual URL where the visitors gets sent upon a click.
Or better yet, if we block "ebay", get rid of all the advertisers mentioning ebay.

[mifi601]

filtered all ebay affiliate ads .., meaning all ebay domains

[hunderdown]

I only see ebay ads on pages that are new or maybe somewhat off-topic from my site's focus. So I don't have to think about banning them. If you are getting decent ads at all, the ebay ones should gradually drift out of the picture with no action on your part. That's my experience, anyway. I only ban a few select sites that I believe are advertising deceptively.