eBay UK's homepage and the GREAT BIG AD
24/11/2008 at 11:09
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At the spendiest time of year, eBay UK are promoting not their sellers, not even something related to their sellers like PayPal buyer protection or some kind of holiday giveaway – they’re promoting an off-site deal for a mobile phone company to, as far as I can tell, every single person who visits the site.
Experienced sellers, I know, will be itching to comment that they never visit the home page but go straight to My eBay. But this is the time when – we hope – new buyers might just be visiting the site, checking it out to see if those tempting ads about eBay being 25% cheaper than the high street are really true. Wouldn’t it have been nice to show them some eBay content rather than sending them straight off to a different site altogether?
Would it have been so much to ask to have had some nice promotional creatives featuring different areas of the site in which Christmas presents might be procured?
Whirly says
11:31 am on 24/11/2008
I agree.
There is also a big advert for TomTom at the bottom which appears to be an offsite link (which don’t work
) , but as you say, thats alot of the front page taken up trying to convince people to leave eBay.
Dan Wilson says
11:40 am on 24/11/2008
Totally bewildering. Anyone else remember when eBay was a marketplace?
northumbrian says
11:42 am on 24/11/2008
Guess what you can get your mobile needs sorted out on ebay this christmas
then a great big stonking, humougous advert in Shocking red for Vodaphones website
its just unbelievable
northumbrian says
11:44 am on 24/11/2008
Guess what you can get your mobile needs sorted out on ebay this christmas
is the banner headline
then a Stonking great advert for VODA phone
simply outrageous
Whirly says
12:15 pm on 24/11/2008
#3 Sit back Norf,
It won’t be as outrageous as when Bobbly Dazzler comes along shortly to put some spin on it, nowt like a bit of razzle dazzle to confuse the great unwashed.
northumbrian says
12:25 pm on 24/11/2008
Iam waiting to see a great big B& Q advert on the whirly site
Get your unwashed, washed! in a B&Q whirlpool bath
get it up yer pipe @ Plumb center
lol
Whirly says
12:26 pm on 24/11/2008
Richard says
1:39 pm on 24/11/2008
Rediculous! Currently I’m seeing the Vodaphone advert, one for a deal of the week coming tomorrow???? and another at the bottom for an Experian credit report thing?
Whirly says
1:44 pm on 24/11/2008
#7 Look on the brightside Richard, they are not advertising Dolphin Bathrooms or HMV,,
Yet.
Richard says
1:53 pm on 24/11/2008
No but there’s a link to hmv on more or less every DVD or CD search on eBay already.
Whirly says
1:55 pm on 24/11/2008
#9 Thats true. The *cough* Marketplace sure has changed this year.
Steve says
2:52 pm on 24/11/2008
Coughs… http://www.rediculous.co.uk
The whole advertsing issue is getting out of hand, and the site is now starting to look like a low-effort affiliate site, with tacky flash and google ads.
They become counter productive pretty quickly, as people begin to see them as “site decoration” rather than genuine content.
Still, eBay are desperate for short term revenue at any cost it seems.
northumbrian says
6:04 pm on 24/11/2008
hawking and pushing mobile phones is not going to do much for ebays
respectability
sue says
6:17 pm on 24/11/2008
I’m a U.S. ebayer. About a month ago, the front page ad over here was for viagra. What I love is ebay now seems to think they have mental telepathy. They said that they advertise on the home page based on what you have searched for. Well, I got news for them, they need to pay more attention to their own “members” because that’s not something I ever searched for. I’m a chick! It’s getting worse and worse over here and I suspect you all in the U.K. will be subjected soon to how U.S. ebay sellers are being treated. We built them and they no longer want us!
Whirly says
7:38 pm on 24/11/2008
#14 “Members” “Viagra” There has to be a joke in there somewhere
Sue Bailey says
7:50 pm on 24/11/2008
#14 Sue – that was apparently the result of a virus rather than eBay actually selling viagra ads. There was a thread in which Griff said that, althought the thread’s been pulled now.
Peter says
2:06 am on 25/11/2008
The Tom tom ad on the home page is just as good.
Says normally £199.
Humm.. I think it’s a lot less than this normally!
More like normally £149
Misleading or what.
Ed (BuildaSkill) says
8:41 am on 25/11/2008
Spring already?
Are those cuckoos I hear
Nawww – it’s just an eBay strategy meeting
hitch says
4:23 pm on 25/11/2008
The TomTom deal was from clearancebargains, its the Argos Outlet division.
faculty-x says
7:08 pm on 25/11/2008
and in the good old ebay double standards we have all come to know and love.
look at any of the other products from that tom tom seller clearance bargains
every one has a really obvious off site weblink in the add body under the warehouse picture along with a 7 day return policy…lol
ebuyerfb says
1:02 am on 26/11/2008
@ # 14
That really was from a virus as Sue (# 16) stated. I saw the forum thread but wasn’t fully convinced since it seemed to fit the typical eBay MO. But I also heard that it was a widespread problem with other sites like espn.com, etc and saw the virus mentioned on Google News. That one definitely wasn’t eBay’s fault.
Sue Bailey says
3:10 pm on 26/11/2008
Seems we should be grateful they’re not selling space to Amazon:
http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2008/11/1227705972.html