• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 3, 2022

eBay on Thursday introduced its first advertising tool for auction listings. The company calls it Promoted Listings Express. It builds on eBay’s launch of Promoted Listings Advanced, which the company launched in September.

Auction listings on eBay is when sellers name a starting price to bid against other buyers for a specific product. The sellers keep track of bids in a new window or tab section of My eBay. When the listing ends, the highest bidder wins the auction and pays for the item.

One benefit of the marketplace has been the ability to sell items at a fixed price or through an auction.

"Where our Ads products have fallen short is in offering sellers a way to promote auction listings on our marketplace — something they’ve been asking for,” wrote Cortney Mayeda, eBay lead product manager, in a blog post.

Inspired by seller feedback, eBay developers built Promoted Listings Express to help sellers make their auction items stand out among the billions of listings across the eBay marketplace.

Auction sellers can now leverage the benefits of Promoted Listings to boost visibility of their listings and help drive views, bids and sales.

Promoted Listings Express was initially launched on eBay’s app to test use and gather critical seller feedback. It has since been rolled out across desktop and mobile web, making it easy for sellers to promote their auction listing from any device. 

During the next several months, eBay plans to offer sellers more ways to access Promoted Listings Express and their advertising reports, in addition to expanding the placements across eBay.

These changes will allow more sellers to take advantage of this heightened visibility for their auction items and see the impact their promotion is providing, according to the company.

Promoted Listings Express enables users to promote their listings for an up-front, flat fee, which depends on the length of the auction and the category selected when listing the item. Sellers will see the fee when the person promotes the listing.

Listings promoted through Promoted Listings Express will appear in sponsored ads on listing pages of similar listings. To use this type of auction, the item cannot be listed in the Vehicles, the Real Estate, the Travel, or other select categories. The seller also must have “enough” account activity and be in the seller level of Above Standard or Top Rated.

It only takes two clicks to adopt Promoted Listings Express. Sellers don’t need to worry about understanding ad rate percentages, keywords or campaign structures and concepts to promote an auction listing.

The unique seller fee will be prominently displayed on screen and will be based upon a variety of factors, including the item category and auction duration. After reviewing the fee, sellers can launch their promotion in just two clicks.

Sellers can view their Promoted Listings Express ad report on the eBay app to measure the impact the promotion has had on their listing’s visibility. This ad report shows the listing’s total impressions, promoted impressions and organic impressions.

The auction-based ad unit is available to sellers in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Australia, Canada, France, Italy and Spain who have Auction and Auction Buy It Now listings.

eBay also provides a way to monitor performance.