AuctionBytes recently noticed what appeared to be a decline in eBay's "natural search" rankings, so a recent discussion on the Webmaster World discussion forums got my attention. A participant wrote on Friday, "So I guess Ebay has realized how much they need Google's Ads because starting this week they are all over Google Adwords again after quite a long vacation."
It's an anecdotal report, but if true, there might be a number of reasons for such an increase in Google AdWords spending. The most obvious reason is seasonal - summers are traditionally a slower shopping season for etailers, so ad-spending for many keywords dips. Or, an increase in eBay advertising could be a reaction to a fall-off in natural search, as we wrote about last week.
A former eBay affiliate marketer had another theory. He suggested eBay might be trying to make up for a loss of traffic from affiliates no longer in the program as a result of eBay's changes to the program. (eBay made recent changes to its program that angered some affiliates, but it was over a year ago that eBay had stopped compensating affiliates for paid-search traffic.)
As the webmasters noted, an increase in eBay keyword bidding results in higher costs for other advertisers, but this time of year, it's probably to be expected in keywords involving consumer goods.
