eBay Ads

eBay has announced it will be introducting contextual ads for eBay sellers. The eBay ads will allow sellers to promote their auctions on other websites -- directing traffic to their eBay auctions. The ads will be placed on other websites (for a percentage of the sale if the auction listing actually sells.) The program (eBay AdContext) is being tested currently.

I'll be interested to see if this takes off. It seems that it's just another way to make money for eBay along with all of their fees. I can see this working for large ticket items, but for smaller eBay sellers, it may end up taking too much of their profit to make much sense. With eBay listing fees, selling fees, store fees, and PayPal fees generally added to each eBay item sold, another fee may not be very attractive to sellers. I do think a lot of people will try the service out to see if it works and ends up in more sales. I'm waiting to see how things turn out before writing off this service completely.