Amazon Sponsored Products
Sponsored Products are pay-per-click ads shown in search results and on product pages. You bid per keyword or product target, set a daily budget and pay when a shopper clicks. Search term reports show what shoppers typed, which lets you add negatives and harvest winners. Results are usually judged by ACOS, TACoS and profit per SKU.
eBay Promoted Listings
eBay offers promoted listings in more than one form. The Standard form charges an ad rate (a percentage of the sale price) only when an item sells after a shopper clicked the promoted listing, so the cost is tied to a sale. The Advanced form is pay-per-click with keyword bids. Because the Standard cost is a percentage of the sale, you judge it against item margin, not a bid.
Walmart Sponsored Search
Walmart's sponsored products are also an auction: you bid on keywords and pay per click. Walmart.com traffic and shopper behaviour differ from Amazon, so bids and targets that work on one rarely carry over unchanged.
What differs, and what to keep consistent
- Cost model: pay per click (Amazon, Walmart, eBay Advanced) versus a percentage of a sale (eBay Standard).
- Reporting: different attribution windows and different column names, so numbers are not directly comparable until normalised.
- Control: keyword and bid control varies by product and by marketplace.
- Stock: advertising an item that is out of stock wastes spend on every marketplace.
One view of profit across channels
The cleanest way to run several marketplaces is to measure the same thing everywhere: profit per SKU after fees, cost of goods and ad spend. Compare a SKU's profit on each channel, move budget toward the channel that earns more per ad dollar, and stop ads that cannot cover their own costs.
Quick answers
Which marketplace has the best advertising return?
It depends on your products, margins and competition. Compare profit per SKU after ad spend on each channel instead of comparing ACOS alone.
Do eBay Promoted Listings charge per click?
The Standard form charges only when an item sells after a click on the promoted listing; the Advanced form is pay-per-click.
Keep reading
- Amazon PPC automation: what to automate and what to keep manual
- How to calculate true profit per SKU on Amazon
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