When I allow eBay Promoted Listings and when I refuse to touch them
After years of selling on eBay, I don’t treat Promoted Listings as a tactic.
I treat them as a diagnostic instrument and only a narrow one.
This is the rule I actually use.
I allow Promoted Listings only when they help me measure the strength of existing demand.
I never use them to create demand, rescue weak items, or prop up a catalogue.
That single distinction removes most of the noise.
For me, Promoted Listings are allowed only when all of the following are true.
First, demand is already proven.
The item either:
- has sold organically, or
- sits in a category with clear, typed-in buyer intent
If buyers aren’t already looking for it, ads are irrelevant.
Second, the item converts without ads.
I don’t advertise things that need advertising to sell.
If a listing won’t move at the right price without promotion, that’s information and it’s cheaper to learn it without paying an ad fee.
Third, the margin can absorb the tax.
After fees, shipping, and the ad rate, the sale still needs to make sense.
Promoted Listings are never used on thin-margin or clearance stock.
Ads don’t fix bad maths.
Fourth, the scope is narrow and temporary.
I apply ads to a specific item or a very small group of items, for a defined window usually two to four weeks.
- No blanket promotion.
- No “just leave it on”.
- No shop-wide defaults.
Fifth, the rate stays low.
If the minimum ad rate doesn’t surface the item, that tells me something useful.
Raising the rate to force visibility tells me nothing except how much margin I’m willing to give up.
Just as important are the situations where I don’t allow Promoted Listings at all.
- I don’t use them in catalogue-led businesses where depth, ageing, and discovery are the advantage.
- I don’t use them to compensate for weak demand, slow categories, or speculative listings.
- I don’t use them because eBay suggests it, nudges it, or frames it as “best practice”.
- And I never run them by default.
Default use is the clearest sign that the economics aren’t being interrogated.
This isn’t an anti-ads position.
It’s a refusal to confuse activity with progress.
Promoted Listings can answer a narrow question if you already know what you’re measuring.
Outside of that, they mostly answer the wrong one: “How much am I willing to pay to avoid thinking about demand?”
For my businesses, that’s not a useful question to optimise.
