Would You Pay to Keep Your Listings Free of Rival Ads?

As eBay and Etsy ramp up their paid-listing ads, sellers are getting increasingly concerned about the impact on their sales. One result of marketplaces looking for revenue growth from ads is the insertion of blocks of ads for rival listings directly inside sellers’ own listing pages.

Sellers work hard to get buyers to find and click on their view item pages, not just through compelling photos, descriptions, and other listing optimization efforts, but through investments in email marketing, social media, and yes – paid advertisements of their own.

So when they have a shopper land on their listing, they don’t want them distracted by other sellers’ listings.

In September, Etsy got even more creative in how it enticed shoppers on the listing page to review other products from rival sellers; it added search filters inside listings (seemingly part of a test), and sellers were furious, as we reported on the AuctionBytes Blog.

In some ways, it’s a vicious cycle – if sellers get fewer sales, they are more tempted to pay for Promoted Listing Ads, which leads to more ad inventory for eBay to place on its site.

Does a seller “own” the listing page? Should it be an ad-free zone? Or, should sellers get a reward if an ad on their “real estate” leads to a sale for another seller?

Would you be willing to pay to have your listing be an ad-free zone in the hopes it would boost conversion for your products?

Let us know what you’re seeing out there – do you think eBay and Etsy are going too far in distracting visitors to your listings, or do you appreciate the chance to have your own promoted listing ads seen in other sellers’ listings?

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