Listing & promoting
New and updated item specifics and category structures to help your listings get noticed
What you need to know
- Category changes to help buyers find your items
- Updates to item specifics and category structures
- Promoted Listings Standard in Best Offer
- Enhancements to Promoted Listings Standard campaign management and reporting
Category changes to help buyers find your items
We continue to make category changes to create more intuitive buying, selling, and search experiences. The changes bring eBay into closer alignment with industry-standard classifications, enhance search engine optimization, and make it easier for domestic and international buyers to find your items.
Starting in May 2022, if you listed an item in an affected category and your listing is impacted by the changes, eBay will automatically move your listing to the most relevant category. As a result of the changes to the category structure, if your listing is moved to a different category, you may experience a change in the fees (either an increase or decrease).
Updates to item specifics and category structures
We’re rolling out new item specifics in some categories to help listings match what buyers are searching for. We’re also updating a few category structures and item specifics names—all to help customers find your listings on and off eBay.
We know new item specifics and updated categories can take time to adapt to. As we roll out these changes, we aim to keep new item specifics focused to a smaller number of changes—so you can benefit from the potential for increased visibility in those categories with as little disruption to your business as possible.
- New item specifics will be available in some categories starting May 17. These item specifics will be required in mid-July 2022.
- When we release new item specifics, some category structures will also change, and we’ll update what we call some existing item specifics.
New item specifics will be available on May 17
To help your listings match what buyers are searching for, we’re adding new item specifics in the following categories:
- Collectibles (Toys)
- Health & Beauty
- Home & Garden
- Parts & Accessories
These item specifics give buyers important at-a-glance information about an item, and can include things like brand, color, or size. Because these new item specifics are crucial to giving your listings the best chance of being discovered, they’ll be required in mid-July 2022. You’ll be able to add them to listings starting May 17. These item specifics will be tagged as Required Soon, so it’s easy to see what you need to add.
We’re also working with industry experts to refresh how we structure some categories, and how we describe some item specifics within those categories, to reflect ecommerce trends. This means that when we roll out new item specifics, some category structures will also change, and we’ll update the names used to describe some existing item specifics. Learn more about category changes.
These changes are all key to helping listings be discovered by potential buyers on and off eBay, especially when buyers use search filters.
Tools to help you find and update missing item specifics
Whether you have a lot of listings or just a few, we’ve got your back with time-saving tools and features to update item specifics:
- Download/Upload file. Available in the Seller Hub Active Listings page, this tool identifies and updates missing item specifics in bulk.
- Reminders in Seller Hub and My eBay. The Overview pages on Seller Hub and My eBay Selling will show reminders to update listings with missing item specifics.
- Quick filters. Use quick filters on Seller Hub Active Listings to view all listings missing Required, Required Soon, or Recommended item specifics.
- Required Soon feature. When you’re listing, look for indicators above item specifics that will be required soon. These will also show the date the item specifics will be required.
- Edit item specifics in bulk. On the Seller Hub Active Listings page, select multiple listings to load into a pop-up window and quickly add missing item specifics.
Next steps
If you sell in any of the categories above, add these new item specifics as soon as they’re available—it may take a few extra minutes, but the time spent refining your item specifics should pay off in increased visibility and sales.
Promoted Listings updates
What you need to know
We've been working on improving our tools to make managing your eBay business even easier. These new improvements are designed to enhance your experience and help you and your business flourish.
- When combining Promoted Listings Standard with Best Offer, you can now see when a Standard ad rate might apply while you’re negotiating an offer. We’ve also launched new features to make your campaign management even easier.
Promoted Listings Standard in Best Offer
You asked us to make it easier to see whether or not an ad fee applies when you negotiate a Best Offer with a buyer. We heard you! Now, when you’re negotiating with a buyer, you’ll see a notification that’ll let you know that an ad fee may apply, which is something you can take into consideration before accepting an offer. With more clarity on the ad fee to expect, it’ll also be easier to see which negotiated transactions are likely to be attributed to your Promoted Listings Standard campaigns.
Enhancements to campaign management
We’ve enhanced our Promoted Listings Standard campaign management and reporting tools to make managing your campaigns and tracking performance even easier.
We’ve added a simplified, new campaign management tool that will allow you to quickly launch your campaigns and manage them all in one place. We’ve also added:
- New ‘Brand’ and ‘Condition’ filters
- A new subcategory-level filter
- Enhanced data visualisation
- Inline sorting for the first 5 columns
You now also have the ability to schedule and download Promoted Listings Standard reports from the Seller Hub Reports tab at the account level and for multiple campaigns at once.
To download reports from the Reports tab:
- Go to Seller Hub Reports
- Select Downloads
- Select Download report
- Select the following report parameters:
○ Source → Marketing
○ Campaign type → Promoted Listings Standard
○ Type → Listing
To schedule reports from the Reports tab:
- Go to Seller Hub Reports
- Select Schedule
- Select Schedule report
- Create a download schedule by selecting the following report parameters:
○ Source → Marketing
○ Campaign type → Promoted Listings Standard
○ Type → Listing
○ Campaign selection type → Automatic, Manual
○ Time unit → Summary, Daily
○ Frequency → Daily, Weekly, or Monthly
Next steps
You can now start downloading and scheduling your Promoted Listings Standard reports from the Reports tab in Seller Hub. You’ll also soon be able to see the new campaign management tool when creating a new Promoted Listings Standard campaign via the marketing tab or when editing from your campaign dashboard.
If a Promoted Listings Standard ad rate applies, a notification will appear when you are negotiating your Best Offer.
Sellers are talking about the Spring 2022 Seller Update in the eBay Community.