eBay Promoted Listings: General vs Priority and How to Set Your Rate

eBay has two ways to advertise your listings. In one you pay a share of the sale, in the other you pay for clicks. Pick one by the numbers of your item, not by eBay's suggestion.

General: pay only when it sells

You set an ad rate from 2% to 100%. eBay shows your listing in ad spots: in search results and on other sellers' item pages. If a buyer clicks that ad and buys within 30 days, you pay your rate on the total sale amount, including shipping and tax (eBay).

What you don't pay for:

• A buyer found you in regular search results, not in an ad spot, and bought. No click on the ad, no fee.
• Someone clicked your ad but didn't buy.

One catch: if the buyer clicked your ad and then bought a different promoted item from you, you pay for that sale too (eBay calls it a halo sale).

Which rate to set. eBay shows a suggested ad rate for each listing, based on competition in the category, your price and listing quality (eBay). Use it as a starting point. The real limit is your margin.

The rate can be one of two kinds:

• Fixed: stays the same until you change it.
• Dynamic: follows eBay's suggested rate every day. You can shift it a few points above or below the suggestion (for example, suggestion minus 2) and set a cap, the highest rate you'll ever pay (eBay developer docs). Set the cap at your break-even rate and the ads can't push an item into a loss.

Example. You sell an item for $40 plus $5 shipping. Total sale: $45.

• Your costs: item $18, postage $6, eBay selling fees $6. Profit before ads: $15.
• Break-even ad rate: $15 ÷ $45 = 33%. Above that, every ad sale loses money.
• At an 8% rate the ad costs $3.60 and you keep $11.40.

If the suggested rate is higher than your break-even, don't promote that item. Fix the price or the costs first.

Priority: pay per click

This is search advertising like Google Ads, inside eBay. You pay for every click, whether the buyer buys or not (eBay).

How it works:

• You create a campaign and pick listings.
• You set a daily budget, minimum $3. It's an average: on one day eBay can spend up to twice the budget, but a month won't cost more than 30.4 daily budgets. $10 a day means at most $304 a month.
• You choose targeting:
  • Smart: eBay picks keywords and bids. You can cap the cost of a click (max CPC).
  • Manual: you choose keywords and a bid for each. Match types: broad (related searches), phrase (your phrase plus other words), exact (searches with the same meaning).
• eBay runs an auction for each ad spot, including the top of search. If you win, you pay between the next highest bid and yours, not always your full bid (eBay developer docs). Listing quality and keyword relevance also count.

You can't switch between smart and manual after launch.

New: video ads. eBay is rolling out video for Priority ads, in beta. You add one video per listing, and it plays on its own in search results and on listing pages; where video isn't supported, eBay shows your main photo. Clicks cost the same as for photo ads (eBay). eBay advises showing the item in the first seconds and keeping it to about 15 seconds.

How much a click is worth. Take the same item: $15 profit before ads. Say 3 of 100 visitors buy (3% conversion). Then one click brings you on average $15 × 0.03 = $0.45. Bid below that, or the ads eat the profit. Check your real conversion in Seller Hub after the first week and adjust.

Which one to use

• Start with General. No sale, no fee, so it's a safe test.
• Add Priority for your best sellers with a good margin, when you want the top of search and are ready to track clicks.
• A listing can be in one General campaign and in Priority campaigns at the same time.

In both cases a weak listing wastes the money. Before you promote, make sure the title has the words buyers search for, item specifics are filled in and the price is competitive.

Other ways to advertise on eBay

Promoted Listings advertise single items. eBay has two more ad types:

• Promoted Stores: ads for your whole eBay store, with your logo, a headline and a few top items. Pay per click (eBay).
• Promoted Offsite: your listings shown outside eBay, mainly in Google search and Google Shopping. Pay per click, eBay sets the price of a click (eBay).

We'll cover both in the next articles.

How SellerClaw helps

SellerClaw connects to your eBay store and works with your real data. Ask it to:

• show the profit on each item after fees and shipping, so you know your break-even rate;
• rewrite titles with the words buyers search for and fill in missing item specifics before you pay for traffic;
• flag items that lose money.

Example request: "Show my eBay items with profit after fees and shipping, and list the ones where a 10% ad rate would leave less than $5."

Want to see which of your listings are worth promoting? Start free with SellerClaw.