How to advertise on eBay: Types, strategies, and ways to promote listings

eBay is far more than just an auction site – it’s a powerful marketing engine offering multiple ways to promote your listings. Whether you’re just taking your first steps in e-commerce or you’re a seasoned seller, there’s a solution tailored for you. From straightforward tools like Promoted Listings Standard and advanced CPC campaigns, to off-platform advertising, eBay has everything you need to stand out from the competition. Read on to discover how to effectively leverage these features to expand your reach and boost your sales!

Creating a winning eBay advert: The key to sales success

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing on eBay is essential for increasing your product visibility and driving sales. When you use eBay advertising to drive awareness of your listings, you actively level the playing field. Relying solely on organic search rankings to acquire potential customers simply isn’t enough these days, especially when you’re up against fierce competition and listings with long-established sales histories.

Historically, eBay arguably underutilised its marketing capabilities, which led some sellers to migrate to other marketplaces like Amazon. Recently, however, eBay has introduced a range of innovative advertising tools. You can easily access them by navigating to the advertising tab in your Seller Hub, where launching a new campaign takes just a few clicks. These updates are particularly helpful for newly launched accounts, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for marketing on the platform.

eBay Promoted Listings Standard

This solution sets eBay apart from other marketplaces, which typically rely on traditional CPC models. With Promoted Listings Standard, you can sponsor your eligible listings, and you only pay when your product actually sells within 30 days of a buyer clicking your sponsored placement. When setting up these eBay ads, you set your own ad rate – an additional percentage of the total final sale price that you’re willing to pay the platform for the promotion. The algorithm uses this rate to assess the competitiveness of your offer and positions it within sponsored search results.

These ads appear in search results and on competitors’ listing pages. The goal is to optimise your settings to maximise impressions and listing views. Since you aren’t charged for clicks, it’s well worth using this format to attract as many potential buyers as possible.

eBay Ads offers two bidding strategies for this format:

• Dynamic ad rate: The algorithm automatically adjusts your ad rate, though you can set a cap on the maximum percentage you’re willing to pay. A dynamic rate increases your chances of securing optimal traffic in a highly competitive landscape.
• Fixed ad rate: You set a static percentage that remains unchanged regardless of algorithmic shifts. If your inventory includes products with varying profit margins, this allows you to segment them into different ad groups for tighter control over your profitability.

If your main goal is budget optimisation within a general campaign, we highly recommend using the dynamic ad rate strategy to ensure a steady stream of traffic. This approach works exceptionally well in popular categories like electronics, fashion, and homeware. It boosts your listings’ visibility and streamlines your campaign management by eliminating the need for constant manual adjustments, ultimately saving you time and improving campaign efficiency.

eBay Promoted Listings Advanced

Promoted Listings Advanced is a robust, CPC-based advertising tool that gives you far more control over your campaigns compared to the Standard version. It allows you to deploy highly targeted ads and choose between automatic and manual keyword targeting, ensuring your products are seen across the eBay network and enabling you to tailor your advertising strategy with precision.

A major advantage of Promoted Listings Advanced is access to premium placements in search results and on product pages. These highly visible spots often generate a higher click-through rate (CTR), which naturally translates into more effective advertising.

With this tool, you can:

• Control your keywords: Select the exact search terms you want to drive traffic to your listings.
• Secure premium placements: Showcase your products in highly prominent areas, such as the top slots in search results.
• Optimise your budget: Monitor performance via your advertising dashboard and adjust your bids based on campaign data.

When running an automatic campaign, it’s crucial to structure your ad groups around your product categories. This helps the algorithm select keywords more accurately, which can lower your CPC and improve your ranking in sponsored search results.

If you opt for a manual campaign, here’s a pro tip: for maximum efficiency, stick to a dozen or so carefully selected keywords per campaign and bid slightly below eBay’s suggested rates. This tactic often yields similar traffic volumes at a fraction of the cost.

Promoting auction-style listings

If you sell via auction-style listings on eBay, you can still use Promoted Listings to boost your visibility. This feature allows your items to appear in prominent placements, sometimes even close to the eBay homepage, or within “Similar sponsored items” and standard search results. This puts your auctions right in front of millions of eBay users actively looking to bid.

From our experience, auction-style listings are generally declining in popularity. However, if this sales model suits your specific inventory, running a well-optimised campaign will certainly help drive more traffic to your listings. Just bear in mind that the success of promoting auctions heavily depends on setting competitive ad rates and the inherent demand for the product itself.

Offsite Ads: How to advertise on eBay and beyond

Offsite Ads allow you to promote your listings across external channels, such as Google Shopping. If you’re wondering how to advertise on eBay while capturing off-platform traffic, this feature targets shoppers who are searching for products directly on search engines.

This feature typically performs best if you’re selling items in highly popular categories. That said, we’ve seen first-hand that even niche products can achieve excellent results through off-platform advertising.

Currently, campaign configuration options are quite limited. The only parameters you can set are the campaign duration and your daily advertising budget. eBay’s algorithm handles the rest, automatically selecting the listings it deems most likely to perform well.

On one hand, this is incredibly convenient. Beginner sellers don’t have to guess which products will convert best on Google. On the flip side, you might end up spending your budget promoting an item you’d rather not advertise at all.

Our analyses also suggest that Offsite Ads can be somewhat unpredictable. The eBay algorithm may suddenly shift focus from one promoted product group to another, even while the initial group’s sales are still trending upwards.

This is partly due to shifting consumer search trends, but it doesn’t always align with your desired outcomes. Because of this, while we do recommend enabling Offsite Ads, we advise treating them as a supplementary component of your broader marketplace marketing strategy.

Other marketing opportunities

Beyond traditional ads, eBay provides several other promotional tools to help sellers merchandise their products and grow their eBay store. These include multi-buy discounts, special offers, coupons, best offers, classified ads for certain services or large items, shop newsletters, and social sharing. Below, we outline the two features we consider to be the most valuable.

Multi-buy discounts

Often referred to on the platform as ‘Multi-buy’ or volume pricing, this tool lets sellers create compelling discount tiers that appear directly on the listing, incentivising customers to purchase multiple items. You can configure discounts based on the quantity bought – for instance, offering a 5% discount when a buyer adds two items to their basket.

This feature is incredibly useful for products that customers naturally buy in bulk, such as groceries, cosmetics, or household cleaning supplies. Multi-buy not only attracts more buyers and increases listing views, but it’s also a proven tactic for boosting your average order value (AOV).

Special offers

This feature allows you to run attractive, time-sensitive promotions on selected inventory (often set up via ‘Order discounts’ or sale events). It’s an excellent way to capture buyer attention and drive quick sales. Because these offers are available for a limited time, they create a sense of urgency, encouraging shoppers to make a purchase decision on the spot.

You can configure various promotional types, such as a percentage off, free postage, or additional perks at checkout. It’s a highly effective tool for clearance sales, seasonal events, or liquidating excess stock. Furthermore, eBay frequently highlights these promotions with special badges on the listing, which really helps your items catch the eye of browsing shoppers.

Summary

We hope this guide makes it easier for you to kickstart your marketing efforts on the platform. eBay offers a wealth of opportunities, and there really is something for everyone. Whether you prefer the low-risk nature of a Cost Per Sale model – where you only pay when an item actually sells – or the granular control of advanced CPC campaigns, eBay provides the tools you need to scale your business. And if you’re looking to capture external traffic, off-platform advertising is a great avenue to explore.

To truly maximise your potential on the marketplace, it’s worth experimenting with supplementary tools like time-limited promotions or volume pricing. Remember, the secret to success lies in tailoring your strategy to your specific business goals and budget. There’s no single, universally perfect approach, but with a bit of testing, you’ll undoubtedly find the formula that works for you.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of options, remember you don’t have to do it alone. You can always reach out to our marketplace experts who can help you define and execute the optimal strategy. Best of luck with your sales!