eBay Promoted Listings: how General and Priority ads are charged

How eBay Promoted Listings work

eBay Promoted Listings are paid ads for listings you already have on eBay. You create a campaign from the Advertising tab in Seller Hub and choose a campaign strategy. The strategy decides how much access the ads get to ad placements and how eBay charges you.

General is the pay-on-sale option. eBay's Seller Center calls it a cost-per-sale strategy: you only pay when your item sells, and the fee is a percentage of the sale. Priority is the pay-per-click option. It uses a cost-per-click (CPC) model, and you are charged for valid clicks, regardless of whether a sale is attributed to that click.

Both strategies have the same entry rule: Above Standard or Top Rated sellers with enough account activity can promote fixed price listings for most categories. The table sets the two strategies side by side.

How to promote a listing on eBay

These are the steps for a General campaign from the Advertising dashboard in Seller Hub. You can also promote one listing from Seller Hub Active Listings or My eBay Active, select up to 200 listings at once in Active Listings, or use easy boost to promote all your listings at a single ad rate from the eBay app.

1. Open the Advertising tab

   Go to the Advertising tab in Seller Hub and select Create new campaign, then choose Promote your listings from the ad types.

2. Choose General or Priority

   Pick the General strategy to pay only when a promoted item sells, or Priority to pay per click with a daily budget. The rest of these steps follow General.

3. Add listings

   Select listings by hand, enter item IDs, upload a CSV, or create a rule. A rule-based campaign will automatically include current and future listings that match your criteria, such as one category in a price range.

4. Pick an ad rate strategy

   Choose between “Dynamic ad rate, which automatically updates your ad rate to our daily suggestion, or Fixed ad rate, which will not change once it’s set”, as eBay puts it. If you choose fixed, set an ad rate for each listing. You won't be able to set your own ad rate in the quick listing tool, so use the Advertising dashboard if you want to choose the rate yourself.

5. Name and date the campaign

   Enter a campaign name and set a start date and an end date, then select Launch.

6. Check the results

   The Advertising dashboard shows clicks, sales and ad fees for each campaign. The fees themselves appear in your Payments tab in Seller Hub, or the transactions page in My eBay.

eBay Promoted Listings cost with General: the ad rate

With General, the cost is the ad rate times the sale. You choose an ad rate of 2% - 100% of the item's total sale amount, and the fee is that percentage of the item's total sale amount, including item price, shipping, taxes and any other applicable fees. Because shipping and sales tax are part of the total, they raise the ad fee along with the item price.

eBay shows a suggested ad rate for each listing: a recommended percentage unique to your specific listing and current marketplace conditions. A dynamic ad rate follows that suggestion every day. If you use it, you can set an ad rate cap, which is the maximum percentage you're willing to pay on a sale. eBay also says applying the suggested ad rate is not a guarantee of stronger ad performance, so a higher rate can bring more views without bringing a sale.

The ad fee applies only when all of these are true:

• A buyer clicked the General ad. A click counts as any interaction with your ad, for example: add to watchlist, add to cart, quick view.
• The sale traces back to a General ad click: eBay charges when a buyer purchases the promoted item from a general ad that any buyer clicked on in the most recent 30 days. The buyer who clicks does not have to be the buyer who pays.
• The item was promoted at the time of click and the time of sale.
• The rate charged is the ad rate in effect at the time of the sale. Raising or lowering the rate changes later sales, not sales already made. For an accepted Best Offer, the ad fee is based on the ad rate in effect at the time of the sale.

Several clicks do not add up to several fees. eBay says you are only charged when the promoted item sells within 30 days of a click on your ad. If one buyer buys from a multi-quantity listing in separate purchases, you are charged the fee that applied when the buyer last clicked on your promoted listing within the 30-day window for each purchase.

General ads can also show in sponsored placements off eBay, including search engines. By default, General listings are eligible to appear in external sponsored placements. You can ask eBay to keep your General ads on eBay only, and the opt-out takes effect 7 days after submitting a request. When you relist an item, the Promoted Listings status is carried over to the new listing, so it keeps paying the ad rate on the next sale.

What a General ad adds to one sale

Example: one $40 denim jacket sold by a US seller without an eBay Store, in a most-categories listing. The first bar is the sale with no ad. The second is the same sale after a click on a General ad at the lowest rate, 2%. The difference between the two bars is the ad fee.

eBay Promoted Listings cost with Priority: clicks and a daily budget

Priority uses a cost-per-click (CPC) model. Each click is priced by a second price auction, and the price depends on listing quality, keyword relevance, your bid amount, competition from other sellers, and a reserve price. eBay defines the reserve price as “the minimum amount we've determined a click is worth”. You choose Smart targeting or Manual targeting. With smart targeting eBay bids for you, and you pay up to - but never more than - any maximum CPC you set. With manual targeting you set keyword bids yourself. You cannot change your priority campaign's targeting strategy from smart targeting to manual targeting, and vice versa, after your campaign has launched.

Every Priority campaign has a target daily budget: the average daily amount you're comfortable spending throughout the calendar month. The lowest you can set is $3 and the highest is $1,000,000. On a single day a campaign can spend up to double the highest target daily budget in effect on that day, but over a month it is capped at 30.4 times your target daily budget. eBay's own help page gives this example.

Priority bills the click itself. You are charged for valid clicks, regardless of whether a sale is attributed to that click. eBay filters out clicks it judges invalid: if clicks on an ad are identified as invalid, you will not be charged. Clicks you make yourself count, because you are charged if you click on your own priority ad.

Promoting the same listing with General and Priority

A listing can be in multiple priority campaigns but only ever in one general campaign at a time. eBay uses a last-click attribution model for reporting, but that does not cancel a General fee. A listing in both strategies is still charged for Attributed Sales from general clicks even if your ad received a subsequent priority click. So a sale can carry a General ad fee on top of the Priority clicks you already paid for.

Priority also reports halo sales. A halo sale is when the same buyer purchases any other item from your store after clicking on a priority ad. eBay counts it when the buyer buys a different item from the same seller within 30 days of that click. eBay's attribution guide says the seller won't pay any additional ad fees for this subsequent sale, because Priority charges only for the click.

When eBay takes the ad fee

Your fees and selling costs are automatically deducted from the proceeds of your sales. eBay's fee table groups ad fees with shipping labels and refunds to buyers, which are charged at the time they’re incurred, from your Available and Processing funds.

On each order, the order details in Seller Hub show a line called Promoted Listings - General fee with the other selling costs, so you can see what the ad cost on that sale. If your sales proceeds cannot cover the fees, eBay charges your on-file payment method, such as a credit or debit card, or linked payout bank account.

To check whether ads pay for themselves, compare the ad fee on each promoted sale with what that sale left you after eBay's other fees.

Where Nation fits

Questions about eBay Promoted Listings