eBay sellers who’ve seen success with Promoted Listings and want more power and control over their ads should consider using Promoted Listings Advanced (PLA).

Both ad units offer improved visibility for listings amongst the billions of listings across the site. PLA layers in improved control. 

To help you determine if you should be testing the power of PLA, we’ll describe how the ad type works, how it compares to Promoted Listings, and how you can leverage it to grow your eBay business. 

How Promoted Listings Advanced Differs From Promoted Listings

As with Promoted Listings, you get greater visibility for your products by deploying Promoted Listings Advanced. In fact, with this ad type, you get the top spot in search results.

You also get more levers to optimize your ads and more control over how you spend. Promoted Listings Advanced operates on a cost-per-click (CPC) model, as opposed to Promoted Listings’ cost-per-sale model. 

With PLA there is also more control over how you match with searches. Promoted Listings Advanced lets you designate keywords to match your ads.

Promoted Listings & Promoted Listings Advanced At A Glance

Combine Both Ad Types For Best Coverage And Control

There’s no need to choose between the two ad types. We recommend testing both to determine what works for your business. Keeping both running at once enables you to maintain broad coverage while also taking risks that could bring great rewards. 

Running Promoted Listings gets you high coverage at low risk, while Promoted Listings Advanced allows you to achieve the best placement by wielding more complex controls.

How Promoted Listings Advanced Works

Promoted Listings Advanced is available for products in most categories in the US and UK for Above Standard or Top Rated sellers. Auction and Auction Buy It Now listings are not eligible.

The ads use keywords and operate on an exact match model with flexibility for variance. That means that shoppers who use common misspellings, abbreviations, synonyms, plurals, etc. will still be matched with your ad.

eBay matches searches with Promoted Listings Advanced based on a combination of relevance and bid.

How You’ll Spend on Promoted listings Advanced

Promoted Listings Advanced operates on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, meaning that sellers are charged every time a shopper clicks on their ad. Note that this differs from Promoted Listings, which runs on a cost-per-sale basis.

eBay runs a second-price auction where the winner of the auction is charged the second-highest price that was bid (not the amount bid by the winner). 

You can set a daily budget to serve as a guardrail for your advertising spend. Once that budget cap is hit each day your campaigns stop running. The minimum daily budget is $1.00 and there’s a $.02 minimum bid, making it easy to get started testing these ads even on a limited budget.

How To Select Keywords & Bids

eBay provides suggested keywords and bids. You can also harvest performing keywords from other platforms where you advertise, such as marketplaces like Amazon or Walmart. 

The important thing to remember is that eBay is a unique platform. Nothing will be exactly the same as it is on your other marketplaces because the backend structures differ, the audiences differ, and your competition differs.  

So, don’t assume that your best keywords from other platforms will be your best on eBay. Test keywords, monitor performance, and prune the ones that don’t perform well. 

Measure Performance And Optimize Campaigns

You’ll need to measure the performance of your Promoted Listings Advanced campaigns, closely track changes, and take advantage of the optimization levers that eBay makes available. 

Utilize reports provided by eBay to understand your ad performance:

  • Account Performance report
  • Campaign Performance report
  • Listing Performance report
  • Keyword Performance report
  • All Campaigns Performance report
  • Inventory Performance report

Never assume that campaigns are optimized and can be left to run on their own indefinitely. Many changes in the eBay marketplace can impact the performance of your campaigns, including changes in seasonality, competition, and shopper demand.

Want help launching and optimizing your eBay Promoted Listings Advanced campaigns? Our experienced analysts are here to help. 

Let’s Talk