Is eBay paying $5 or $10 per click?

Quality score doesn`t affect eBay`s spamy ads

[lucky]

Hi all,

If eBay doesn`t pay $5 or $5 per click for all these spamy ads, Google`s Quality Score is a big lie.

Fantastic prices on Widgets
Buy and Sell.
eBay

You click on the ad and you go to a page which has nothing on it.

If this ads belongs to a small advertiser, Google increases the minimum bid to 5$ right away.

It seems that there is a big difference between big and small advertisers...

Any comments?

[FromRocky]

Quality Score may not apply to Ebay ads.

[toddb]

Seems to support that quality score is effected by the root domain.

[holyearth]

All ads with a display url of ebay.com are exempt from the crap known as "QS"

That's why eBay does NOT allow affiliates to have search placements with ebay.com as a display URL ...

[toddb]

holyearth is this a fact or speculation?

[holyearth]

100% fact

[nightfly]

ebay was spending $25million per quarter on google...
i don't think google would mind the qs not being therefor ebay..
talk about being democratic

[King_Fisher]

Money talks and BS walks! KF

[shorebreak]

I actually think the reason EBay suspended its AdWords buy was because it *had* been affected by the latest QS landing page algo change. They say they've resumed buying but at lower levels and with less reliance on Google, which would tend to support that notion.

As a firm managing more PPC spend than anyone, we haven't seen any big negative effect on Google's overall retail business; 3-4% lower CPC's but already they're coming back up as other retailers fill the space EBay occupied.

[celgins]

That's why eBay does NOT allow affiliates to have search placements with ebay.com as a display URL

Most big-name advertisers have restrictions on how affiliates can or cannot use their names for bidding.

Not sure if there are sweetheart deals that exempt them from quality scores though.

[Rehan]

All ads with a display url of ebay.com are exempt from the crap known as "QS"

No they're not. It's very easy to recreate eBay's ads and see for yourself what kind of initial minimum bids they get. "Bubonic plague" is $0.40, "vomit" is $0.40, etc. (Yahoo still has ads running for those keywords, Google does not). I'm guessing that even these bid levels result in negative ROI for eBay.

I actually get lower min bids if I use my own landing page and display URL, which don't even mention those keywords. Seems to me like there's nothing special about the ebay.com display URL.

If eBay's ads don't get slapped with $5 or $10 min bids, it's because people are clicking on them and helping them maintain a reasonable CTR despite the silly ad copy.

[edited by: Rehan at 2:31 pm (utc) on June 25, 2007]

[jeffgroovy]

Is anyone still seeing "new and used vomit" type ads for eBay now that they're online again after the boycott?

[holyearth]

The restriction on affiliates using ebay.com as a display url went into effect recently.

I know for a fact 100% confirmed from high level sources that ebay has special privileges (through the API) that we do not have. One of these privileges is exemption from most "QS" garbage. The other is immediate ad approval (ad goes live before review ... not JUST on G but on search partners like AOL, Earthlink, etc).

You may or may not see the spammy "slave" or "vomit" ads because as of the last week eBay has cut their adwords spend tremendously. Fact is the entire time eBay has been pumping millions into adwords, they have done it for long term gain ... the short term produced a very negative ROI.