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

Re:UK promo was good

[KingJ]

I took advantage of this too, in effect it gave me free delivery. Certainly swayed me to use their payment system and it's a year long promotion, I wonder what the fees are that google charges retailers in comparison to ordinary card processing services?

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

[Rik Sweeney]

They advertise on Google to draw traffic to eBay

Precisely! Otherwise, how would I know that I can find sinusitis relief on eBay?

Re:eBay wouldn't do that

[Applekid]

Is eBay not a big enough player to require Google advertising?

This got me thinking of advertising in general. 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? Afraid that people who like Coke would switch to Pepsi thanks to those ads so we'd better innundate them with our ads to keep that from happening?

There are defining sites out there on the internet. You wouldn't google for online auctions unless you're looking for an eBay alternative. You wouldn't goggle for user shared video sites unless you're looking for a YouTube alternative.

Or, at least I wouldn't. :)

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.

Paypal useless

[hesaigo999ca]

I am soooooo glad that eBay will now have competition from on of the top dogs for their
paypal excuse for a payment system. I hope google can actually tie this into your gmail account with higher security, although if eBay will not use this service, I dont know where else except the p0rn
sites where this might be usefull?

Message To Ebay: This Is Suicide

[osewa77]

Knowing how much traffic Google drives through search and Adwords, this move by Ebay is nothing but suicide. It's a good thing - for Ebay - that Google has decided to back down.

Ebay is in a bad position, really, because they don't drive their own traffic. If Google decides to launch an auction website, it'd be a real bloodbath, because Ebay is nothing without it's famously massive traffic, much of with it has to buy.

I suspect that they have an agreement with Google that prevents Google from implementing a simple competitor in the auction space.

What happens if Ebay boycotts Google? We'll get less "buy used baby's from Ebay" spam. That's it.

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.

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:UK promo was good

[daeg]

We use Google Checkout. Under their promotions, retailers have it good for the start, too. The ending rates are great, too, much better than PayPal. The Terms of Service are much more agreeable to both the buyer and seller, particularly for physical goods. I'm not sure how they compare to digital goods, but PayPal isn't very good on that front, either.

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!

Re:So hard to choose sides

[The Breeze]

This is obvious a fake post.

I mean, come on, someone claiming to have actually gotten Paypal on the phone? How likely is that?

"We're Paypal. We don't care. We don't have to."
-apologies to SNL.

Re:UK promo was good

[DrogMan]

The promo was/is good and I was about to sign up to Google Checkout to accept smallish payments on a system I'm working on, but was really put off by the fact that Google insist on the person making the payment sign up to a Google account. PayPal dropped this a long time ago, and much as I dislike PayPal, at least now you have the choice to letting your clients make their own decision to signing up to PayPal, or not.

Once Google removes this restriction, I'll probably use them to accept small payments rather than use PayPal.

/DM/

The BBC is spinning this...

[owlnation]

This is not what it seems. I read this article on the BBC earlier today and it annoyed me then.

Their use of the word "angry" in the headline is preposterous. This is shamefully hyperbolic sensationalist tabloid journalism -- something the BBC is pandering to more and more -- they really need to fire some editors. Also, it seems to me that someone in the Richmond offices of eBay has the ear of someone in the BBC, eBay gets an astonishingly high amount of free publicity from the BBC (The BBC does not allow advertising -- um, yeah, sure...). Again, they really need to fire some editors, I'd be astonished if at least some of them were not taking backhanders every now and again -- it certainly looks that way.

Why would a medium sized corporation be "angry". And particularly in this case, although eBay is the largest user of Adwords, eBay is still a very small company compared to Google. eBay has no alternative to Adwords. It's use them, or fail trying something else.

While I'm personally convinced that eBay's management are far from the sharpest executives out there, they are at least smart enough to realize that they need Google much more than Google needs them. Sure, there's some Corporate game playing around checkout etc, and perhaps this move is simply a reflection of that. eBay, like any firm, needs to try to assert themselves occasionally to negotiate better deals. This is business. This is not news.

If Google was planning their own negative party then perhaps it would be good for someone to examine their mission statement -- while not exactly evil, that action isn't something that would give any company the moral high ground.

This is all a storm in a teacup. The whole thing reeks of publicity stunt. Publicity stunts are things the BBC falls for regularly -- especially where eBay are concerned.

Re:Now we will see who has more behind them

[Anonymous Coward]

I've closed my paypal account because they've become a bank and moved to a EU rather than UK system..

1. Although it's high time PayPal were regulated as a bank, their move will not make them one any more than they are currently.
2. The UK is in the EU and has been for a very long time, making the second half of your sentence non-sensical.

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:UK promo was good

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

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

Re:UK promo was good

[bkr1_2k]

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