eBay is discontinuing AdCommerce because Best Match is so great, sellers have no need to do any other advertising of their items. Well, ok, they didn’t say that in so many words but that is pretty close to the reason eBay gives for pulling the plug on their pay-per-click ad service.

Oh and also, eBay thinks that if you could just suck a little less, you wouldn’t need to advertise through something like AdCommerce.

My thoughts on this will be below the official announcement:

We know you’ve either registered for or purchased AdCommerce pay-per-click advertising placements recently to promote your eBay Store or listings. We wanted to let you know this advertising program will be discontinued for eBay.com and eBay.ca on August 4 to ensure the most relevant listings from sellers providing the best prices and service are highlighted in search results.

You do not need to do anything-these AdCommerce placements will no longer be available for eBay.com or eBay.ca and any ads you already purchased to appear on these sites will automatically expire on August 4. Your final billing will be sent out in early September.

We understand that these AdCommerce ads may have provided an advantage to your business. At the same time we are confident that consistently displaying the most relevant items is in the best interest of buyers, sellers and the eBay marketplace.

To ensure maximum exposure for your listings in Best Match, continue to focus on sound business practices and on delivering great value and service to your buyers. Follow these best practices:

  • Retain or achieve eBay Top-rated seller status by providing great service to your buyers
  • Offer good prices and reasonable shipping
  • List in the right format and the right categories
  • Write accurate and relevant titles
  • Write clear item descriptions
  • Include great photos
  • State your terms clearly

As always, thank you for selling on eBay.

Sincerely,
eBay seller team

Now here is one of those moments where I know something you don’t. See, I wrote a post about how much I liked eBay AdCommerce under its old incarnation and scheduled it to post sometime in the future. So excuse me for repeating myself… in the future. There will be another post on this in a few weeks and you’ll all be like… um… what?

Anyway…

I used to use these eBay ads a lot when they were one version previous. They used to give out free ad dollars somewhat frequently and, once I saw how well they worked, I started to actually pay for them. They were really a great value for your ad dollar, probably because not many people used them, and they were a great marketing tool when used correctly. They ended up being much better AND cheaper for my needs than Google Ads so I was a fan. Now, when they redid the program, I never got a chance to use them but, from what I’ve heard, it was much of the same.

I do think Best Match is laughable at best and I think their little bullet list of “Could you please suck a little less?” is a bit condescending and pointless. You can do all of the above and still have a need to drive more traffic to your listings, we can all agree on that.

That said, their announcement on their blog has a different sentence than the announcement above that goes like this, “In order to focus on the best selling and shopping experience…” If that was the real reason, that the program was a drain on resources and was distracting from the important stuff, hell, I’d rather they focus on the important stuff.

But what do you think?