eBay Plans Keyword Bid-for-Click Ad Program
from the taking-a-page-from-Google dept
Someone over at eBay has noticed Google's tremendous success with their AdWords program, and has realized that they can do something similar. Starting tomorrow eBay will let sellers buy certain keywords linking them to related auctions. Here's another case where pay-per-click keywords probably do make sense - since people are specifically searching. The question, though, is how does eBay guarantee the relevancy of the ads, and how clearly will they be marked as paid ads? Google has a pretty strict policy in place to remove any ads that their systems deem not relevant (and there are complaints that their system may be a little too quick on the draw). It's unclear if eBay will have anything similar, or if they just don't care.
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F*ck ebay ads
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eBay Sells Ads
I spend a lot of time on eBay and their search engine already needs work: you simply cannot use enough qualifying terms to winnow out irrelevant items.
This is just going to clutter the search result pages with even more things you don't want to see.
eBay will make a small bit of money on ad sales, and lose a lot from irritated customers who find something better to do than spending their time and money on eBay.
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