eBay Pulls Google Ads Over Marketing Stunt

odoketa writes "According to the BBC, it seems Google scheduled a party to promote their payment system (Google Checkout) on the same day as a big eBay meeting, and this made eBay mad enough to pull their ads with Google. According to the story, eBay says it's merely an 'ongoing experiment' on their marketing. 'Google hoped to alert PayPal users who would have been in Boston attending the eBay Live annual seller event to its own service, according to market experts. It could also have been seen as part of an effort to get eBay to accept Google Checkout, currently banned on the online auctioneer's site. But in a contrite manner, Google cancelled its rival function a day before it was due to happen.'"

Comments

Excellent news!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure many people will appreciate not seeing the spammed ebay links for just about everything you search for. "HDTV", no problem, ebay will spam the top of google with TVs. Death in Iraq, yes, ebay too has a fine stock of Grim Reaper overstock. Come and get it while it's hot, limited stocks, hurry hurry hurry!

eBay wouldn't do that

[91degrees]

They don't advertise on Google to do Google a favour. They advertise on Google to draw traffic to eBay. If they pull their advertising, they hurt themselves. Not as much as they hurt Google, because they can easily spend the advertising budget elsewhere, but still a case of cutting of their nose to spite their faces.

Re:eBay wouldn't do that

[xappax]

Do consumers REALLY need another 5,000 Coke commericals nationwide today, too? Are they afraid that we'll all of a sudden forget they exist?

It's a good question, it seems intuitive that those brands are so deeply entrenched in our collective awareness and habits that they've sort of transcended advertising. It seems like we could never see another ad for Nike, and we'd still remember them and buy their shoes just as much.

But it's not true. The reason we can tell it's not true is that companies like Nike universally continue to spend gobs upon gobs of money on advertising campaigns, which they could've otherwise kept in their pockets. I think the main reason mega-brands advertise is not because they're afraid we'll forget, but because they're afraid we'll start paying attention (or more attention) to their competitors, or even other industries we'd rather spend our money on. Nike doesn't care if we remember them in general, they care if they're the top brand on our minds when we walk into the shoe store, and that we associate them with all the cool things of today.

In this way, advertising is like an arms race. You may have enough advertising to let people know about your product, but another advertiser is just going to step up their campaign and draw even more attention to themselves (and consequently away from you). Keeping the attention on your brand is what keeps you alive as a corporation, so you have no choice but to increase your advertising campaign to even more intensity...they respond in kind, and the cycle continues.

Of course, the result of this marketing cold war is what we have today: an almost completely ad saturated environment. It's difficult to look anywhere in an urban environment without seeing a logo or advertisement - it's so universal that people start to tune it out as background noise, which simply means advertisers must come up with newer, more subtle or outrageous or manipulative ways of increasing their brand awareness and appeal.

Re:eBay wouldn't do that

[Aladrin]

This is probably the most profound and sensible thing said so far. (It's probably a quote, but just roll with me here.)

Advertising is amazingly hard to quantify. How do you -know- if someone bought that item because of advertising, or because they just saw it in the store. Did your advertisement in Magazine X bring in any sales? Was it the TV commercials? Was it the fact that you advertised in 6 different ways? Could you have eliminated one of them with the exact same results, or even better results? Could you have added another?

It would be easy to spend more money trying to determine how successful your ads were than the actual ads cost.

The only thing that could make pulling Google ads worthwhile would be to make a big stink about it on 'moral' grounds and get the news media to advertise for you for a while. Getting Google to cancel their event was a great bonus.

Re:eBay wouldn't do that

[rainman_bc]

which simply means advertisers must come up with newer, more subtle or outrageous or manipulative ways of increasing their brand awareness and appeal. Great post! I want you to run the marketing department in our office ;)

Thing is though, the outrageous stuff is what gets me. This morning I was watching the morning news, and from the traffic chopper out comes a freaking ad from the traffic lady's mouth. How can the morning news not think that this just annoys viewers, and that most of us are intelligent enough to look past that garbage?

I don't choose what beverage I drink from what's on TV. I've never seen an ad for Orangina on TV and that's my favourite beverage. I pick a restaurant based on reviews online at dinehere.ca (I'm from Vancouver so it makes sense). I refuse to buy Nike because honestly they are way overpriced for the value you get. If I am an athlete where the extra spring in my step makes a difference, I'll let Nike put there shoes on me for free. Until them, Umbro or Adidas or Puma is fine for me and I'll keep the other $150 in my pocket thanks. I don't pick my beer based on how slutty looking the models on TV are. I like Hoegarden and Amstel myself, and don't see much ads for those.

I've sat in on marketing conversations at the place I work, and they truly seem to believe that end users are easily manipulated. I think marketers have beliefs about consumers that just aren't true any more.

Re:eBay wouldn't do that

[Dhalka226]

Advertising is amazingly hard to quantify. How do you -know- if someone bought that item because of advertising, or because they just saw it in the store.

Well, there are absolutely people who look into those sorts of things. Besides which, it's probably enough to do some statistics with it; if I'm selling 1,000,000 units a day on average, I run a new ad campaign and all of the sudden I'm doing 1,250,000 units a day, the two probably aren't related.

But there are three points to make about advertising in general, rather than about the effectiveness of specific ad campaigns:

1. They do work to some degree. There's no denying it. I'm sure we've all had moments where we see something on TV, decide "that looks good" or "that looks cool" and go buy it. Even if we don't rush out to buy it specifically, if I see, for example, a new commercial for a drink that sounds really good I may well forget about it but then see it in the store and buy it. I don't think anybody denies this point.

2. You have to do what your competition is doing. A few posts up somebody asked if we really need 5,000 Coke commercials to prevent us from forgetting about it. No, we don't. However if they don't run ads but Pepsi does, it will undoubtedly bite into their sales--so they run them. Pepsi does the same thing.

3. And here comes the potentially controversial one... there is a theory that advertising, as a whole, isn't about the products they pitch. Advertising is about making you feel like whatever you have, it isn't enough. It wants to make you feel like things are missing. Most every commercial has attractive people in it even if they're completely unrelated to the product; it's not so much about "drink Coke and hot women will fawn over you!" as much as it is about making you feel like something is missing and maybe you can buy it. It doesn't necessarily help Coke that you feel like something is missing, but if that feeling gets you to go out shopping that's a win for all companies running ads.

Paypal and Checkout

[kanwisch]

I ditched Paypal when I couldn't reject a credit card payment (I didn't accept them). Assuming Checkout doesn't have the same issue, it'll be my preferred method of payment/receipt for the long-haul.

Re:Message To Ebay: This Is Suicide

[AutopsyReport]

It's not suicide. Most Internet users have been to eBay. eBay was successful long before Google showed up and they will continue to be successful because their success is attached to the name, how easy it is to remember, and how quickly you can type "ebay.com" in the location bar without having to go through a search engine.

I PRAY Google takes eBay down at some point.

[Mewtwo]

...and this is coming from someone who does fairly significant business through eBay.

eBay's fees are ridiculous now, and PayPal even moreso. eBay has continually raised their fees year after year, taking a far too large cut of small items. What's worse is that 2.9% + 30 cents bit on PayPal transactions, whether or not it was actually funded through a credit card. I understand needing to pay yourself back should someone actually pay with a credit card and get small fee on top of that, but when money is moved from one PP account to another, that costs them $0...not to mention that PayPal's fee is done on the TOTAL, not the pre-shipping price, so they end up taking 2.9% of the money that you're supposed to have to ship the item as well. ...and since eBay and PayPal are so closely knit, and almost everyone on eBay only uses PayPal to pay, trying to use any of the smaller players is pretty much futile. The only payment service that can reasonably knock PayPal off of its pedestal is Google Checkout, and eBay knows this.

Between those two things, I'm losing well over 10% on any item that doesn't cost a huge amount of money. They wonder why people do stuff like use eBay contact info to sell outside of eBay and to list $1 items with hundred or even thousand-dollar shipping cost to avoid paying eBay as much as they can.

eBay claims that they want to have payment services with established track records or something like that. Just wait a year or two, and then possibly sue for inclusion, or at least under some law about anti-competitive acts? If Google could get GBay up...

GBay + "do no evil" = death of eBay.

So hard to choose sides

[antifoidulus]

I mean, on one side we have google, a tremendously useful tool that has saved me countless hours when troubleshooting problems/doing research.

And on the other side we have paypal who called me a liar on the phone because I told them that they, not I, made a mistake

So hard to choose sides!

Death of the one trick shop

[Stu101]

Now its down to who blinks first, im guessing that Google either have:

A) An ebay alternative (Killer? )
B) The resources to create one pretty quick.

We will have to see what countermeasures Ebay can conjour up. My guess is not a lot because Ebay, to my mind at least, is a one trick pony.

Godwins Law invoked on eBay/Google spat ..

[rs232]

"It's no secret that part of Google's plan for world domination is to replace eBay, which involves selling products via Google Base and paying for them using Google Checkout. However, Google isn't yet powerful enough to launch the expected blitzkrieg, so the two companies maintain friendly relations under what's been compared to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed by Von Ribbentrop for Germany and Stalin"

Who said that amateurism on the Internet was leading to the death of real journalisim ..

Godwins Lawbr>
-- br>
"we both made shells for the Nazis, but mine worked, dammit!", C. Montgomery Burns

Hypocrisy? Or just sour grapes?

[WidescreenFreak]

Wait. Let me get this straight. eBay can deny their customers the ability to use alternate payment methods (Western Union, Google Checkout) in an anti-competitive move to try to force people to PayPal, which eBay owns. That's just a-OK. But if Google tries to take advantage of the opportunity to make people aware of Google Payments, which eBay is denying their paying sellers to implement, all hell breaks loose and eBay gets all upset!

Don't get me wrong. I like eBay and PayPal. I've never had a bad experience with either of them. But I found it to be more than coincidental that very shortly after eBay bought PayPal suddenly they have to ban Western Union and other payment services, citing "consumer fraud protection". Oh, f**king spare me!! I used Western Union several times for my auctions with no problems at all. Even eBay's sellers tools will reject the submission of an auction if the words "Western Union" are found in the description!

So, now Google decides to take advantage of an opportunity to make themselves known to eBay customers, and eBay gets all pissed off? Wow.

Re:Message To Ebay: This Is Suicide

[winnabago]

I don't have a source, but it is interesting that ebay still feels the need to tout their own payment systems in real life. About a month ago in Boston, they started putting PayPal ads on the tops of taxis, in bus shelters, and such places. Now that this Google Checkout issue has come out, it makes sense. They saw the pressure from Google coming.

I don't think ebay feels that Paypal can run via its own momentum, with others trying to gain share in that market.

Re:UK promo was good

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Not to mention that eBay loves double-dipping - charge ya for auction closing fees and then PayPal fees.

Greed Ego and Why Ebay Sucks

[grapeape]

http://news.com.com/Google+cancels+rain+on+eBays+p arade/2100-1024_3-6190905.html goes into much more detail.

You have to love Ebay's comments as to why they dont allow Google Checkout, it reliability is unproven. Which of course translates into we dont get anything out of allowing their service and are much happier double-dipping on our "customers". Their real fear is that people would ditch paypal in droves, which is true, I dont know anyone who really likes paypal but its the only choice you have in dealing with Ebay. Ebay may be surprised to find that accepting other forms of payment would bring people back to ebay. I hated paypal so much after being ripped off for a second time that I just stopped using ebay completely, a better choice of payment options might tempt me back. I did still find myself led to Ebay by google often when searching for specific items.

I'd like to see the real numbers on traffice from google to ebay, I have seen it listed as much as 10% and as little as 2%. Still it looks like this hurts Ebay more than Google, I havent seen any numbers suggesting revenue from Ebay totalling more than 1-2%. If I was Google I'd stick to my guns and not allow them back until checkout was declared acceptable.

Re:UK promo was good

[bkr1_2k]

Hopefully you've let google know that. Otherwise it's just wishful thinking.

Re:UK promo was good

[bkr1_2k]

I knew someone was going to say that as soon as I posted. I decided not to bother posting to correct my statement though.

Of course google would have figured it out eventually, it's not anything particularly insightful for them to do. However, the sooner the customers make comments, the sooner google (or any company) will react. If it looks like there's an obviously high demand from the onset, then it will be implemented sooner.

Re:BEWARE of Google Checkout

[ArhcAngel]

That explains the why of it. It does not however explain the lack of communication with the customer during and long after the problem.