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The campaign strapline, “The clothes you love direct from the brands you love”, reflects the growing number of high-street retailers that use eBay to say eBay. The sale of in-season stock on eBay’s Fashion Outlet, has secured shoe retailer Office, 50,000 new customers.

Look out for the ads on outdoor ads will appear on billboards and in stations in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Sheffield from 3rd October, over the next two weeks. Print activity will start today with ads in women’s weekly lifestyle magazines, including Grazia, Hello and More, and in early November for women’s monthly magazines, such as Marie Claire and Glamour.

The campaign was developed by DDB Tribal in Germany, with Carat responsible for the outdoor and print media buying. Essence is running the digital element of the campaign, with a presence across a wide range of fashion sites, bespoke online integrations and sponsorships with influential fashion bloggers going live from 17th October. The campaign will also feature a social media element, targeting fashion enthusiasts on Facebook and encouraging them to explore the Outlet.

This should be good news for all sellers on eBay if it drives more buyers to the site. If you sell clothes shoes and accessories it’s especially good news for you as your items are all accessible from within the eBay Fashion Outlet.

eBay.com have just unveiled their first TV adverts for two years. They’re focussing on mobile shoppers purchasing new fixed price impulse buys with the tag line “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay”.

Mobile shopping is on the up so targeting buyers who will shop anywhere, anytime with a mobile device for what will be eBay’s largest mobile shopping season ever makes sense. The ad series features both tablets and mobile smart phones with the eBay mobile apps installed.

“But it new. Buy it now” is the message in the adverts created by San Francisco ad agency Venables Bell & Partners. Using the simple call to action the campaign is intended to reflect the shopping experience on eBay today. 63% of the more than 200 million live listings at any given time are fixed price and 70% are new products. Mobile sales on eBay are expected to exceed $4 billion by the end of 2011, and eBay’s suite of mobile applications have been downloaded nearly 50 million times, with one purchase made every second through mobile, showing a strong demand for shopping on the go.

There’s a distinctly American flavour to the adverts so I’m not expecting our UK readers to love them, however it would be interesting to hear the reactions of US readers. How well do you think that the new ads will attract new buyers to eBay for the holiday selling season. Would they prompt you to reach for your smart phone the next time you want to purchase something on the go?

Some investigation reveals that it was no random chance I was being shown relevant adverts, they were specifically targeting me with the products I could be interested in based on my activity on eBay.

The advert in question was served by Criteo and they have a help page explaining how technology enables them to display targeted banners that may interest me based on my past browsing history. They know that I’ve visited eBay recently and the behavioral advertising is based on a cookie dropped onto my computer when browsing. Deleting the cookie will end the behavioral advertising, I’ll still be shown adverts but they’ll no longer be based on my past browsing history.

eBay do warn people that they have an AdChoice program to enable them to display customised ads that they believe you’ll find interesting. They say that it enables them to “tailor and improve your shopping experience – both on eBay Inc. websites and anywhere else on the web”.

If you want to opt out of behavioral advertising then you can opt out of eBay AdChoice and also use the tool provided by the Network Advertising Initiative to find which NAI member’s behavioral advertising programs you are currently opted in to and if you wish to you can opt out via your Internet browser’s cookies. (N.B. If you use more than one brower such as IE, Firefox, Chrome etc then you’ll need to view the NAI page in all three browsers to check and/or opt out). The opt outs will only remain in force until you clear your browser’s cookies.

The type of products you browse on eBay and the Internet will affect the behavioral adverts that advertising networks display. Whist browsing was once a personal private matter, companies are now tracking what you view and marketing to you based on what you’ve previously viewed. To avoid this either opt out, or open your browser to an incognito or private browsing session which will automatically delete all cookies and tracking information when you close your browser.

They say that advertising done in the right way will allow them to invest for the future (or in other words make more money) so if you’re in the US, UK or Germany expect to see ads for the likes of Groupon, Universal Pictures, and Visa on the home tab of Skype in the near future.

They promise that the ads won’t interrupt your Skype experience. You won’t suddenly see annoying pop-up ads or flashy banner ads in middle of conversations.

Skype will collect non-personally identifiable information to target ads, which helps ensure that you see relevant ads, but you can opt of sharing your information in the Privacy tab in Skype options.

This does open up some interesting questions – if you use Skype for free then it’s hard to complain that they make a few pennies from displaying and advert, especially on the Skype Home tab which is probably not a view you look at very often.

If you’re paying for Skype and using it for business however adverts are probably a lot less welcome. There’s an opportunity here for Skype to offer a paid for version which is ad free, and maybe with support thrown in so that users can choose not to be inflicted with spurious marketing which they have no interest in.

Rather than attack the site directly the hackers have attacked the banner ads displayed on these sites through advertising networks. The adverts attempted to redirect users through a number of links eventually attempting to sell fake anti-virus software. Other than the banner adverts no other parts of any of the affected sites were compromised.

This must now be a worry for any website who display compromised syndicated adverts. By attacking third party ad networks it gives cyber criminals a much larger reach than attacking any individual network can, and until the sites were blocked by browser malware black lists users were reliant on their own anti-virus software to protect them.

What’s especially interesting is that the hackers were willing to pay for the adverts to be displayed in order to distribute their malware. The rewards of controlling the compromised computers are big enough to justify the upfront cost of placing the compromised adverts onto well known sites with high traffic volumes.

Sites such as eBay depend on their reputation as safe places to transact and eBay themselves are dependant on the third party ad networks to ensure only safe content is displayed. Adverts which play sounds on mouse-over are annoying, but ads including malware are simply unacceptable. The ad network in question has a lot of explaining to do as to how the compromised code slipped through the net and was distributed.

Edited to add: eBay have issued the following statement:

We would like to confirm that eBay.co.uk was one of the websites affected by malware widely reported on Sunday 27th February. The malware, affected a small proportion of advertising on the site and we addressed the issue immediately by removing all affected ad designs from the site. At no stage were eBay systems compromised.

eBay is committed to providing a safe and secure environment for its customers. We advise all our customers to run Anti-Virus software on their computers and refer them to the eBay Security Centre at http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter/antimalware.html to find out more information about malware and how to protect themselves on the Internet.

eBay and Triad say that they will “display ads that takes customers “beyond the banner” and engages them with new brand experiences that are complementary to the eBay experience”. They’ll be creating banner ads where users can view content without actually leaving eBay, and the content will be category specific so it’ll hopefully be more relevant.

eBay say that the partnership will allow them to “integrate new experiences from popular brands and cross-category “content centers” – sponsored landing pages on eBay that will highlight seasonally relevant and interactive content, and inspire new purchases through integrated merchandising with eBay listings”.

The ultimate aim is to show users engaging content from brands that they already know and trust as well as opening up the eBay community to the advertisers.

This news is unlikely to sit well with fee paying sellers who regularly get annoyed with buyers being diverted away from their listings. However at least the new ads aim to delivery the content within eBay and not result in off site clicks, and of course eBay needs to generate profits. All this advertising revenue should (at least one can hope) keep eBay sellers fees down. We’ll wait for this years seller releases to see what happens there.

If you spot the adplacement on Irish listings let us know, it doesn’t appear to be there yet but doubtless it won’t be pleasing our Irish readers regardless of how it fits with the eBay of 2010.

Clothes and shoes were the first things I sold on eBay, back more than a decade ago. And I wouldn’t go back there if the stock were free and there were no DSRs. I have serious admiration for those who can sell any kind of apparel on eBay, because personally, I just don’t have the patience to deal with all the emails saying “well I’m always a size 12 normally but I can’t squeeze my fat bottom into these jeans you’re selling and so that must be your fault”. By the time I closed down that Shop, I swore that I would never again sell clothes to anyone that they couldn’t try on before they bought.

Of course, if you’re a great big catalogue company selling off its returns and end-of-line, things are probably a bit different. eBay creates a new market for you that just doesn’t exist if you’re trying to sell those same goods instore: as one Outlet-owner said to me, “eBay’s made our end-of-line actually profitable”.

John Donahoe has said many times that the “secondary market” is where eBay sees its future. Clothes make sense: everyone needs them, so the market is huge. The “secondary market” itself is huge, because online clothes merchants always do have huge quantities of returned stock to shift. And perhaps most importantly, Amazon doesn’t yet seem to dominate this huge sector.

Amazon UK does have a “Clothes, Shoes and Watches” section but it’s still in beta, and it’s not what most Brits would associate with Amazon’s product range. If I were eBay, I’d grab this opportunity with both hands.

I’ve seen a lot of smaller sellers complaining bitterly about the preferential treatment being given to Fashion Outlets at the moment. I don’t have any good news for you: quite the contrary, I expect eBay to keep pushing these merchants, to push them harder and to add to them with any other big name retailers they can sign up. They will get better deals on fees than you get; they’ll get great leniancy on feedback than you get; they’ll get more promotion to more buyers than you could ever dream of. And they will kill off a lot of smaller sellers.

But for those who can survive it, who can diversify beyond eBay and yet still maintain an eBay presence, there’s an opportunity here. eBay is positioning itself as a destination site for fashion lovers. And some of that traffic will, inevitably, filter down from the Outlets to other clothing sellers. For those who can take advantage of that, there may yet be something to be gained from Fashion Outlets.

It’s possible to opt out of the personalised adverts, but it’s important to note that you’ll still see adverts, they just won’t be tailored to you.

Pictures courtesy of the lovely Richard from Magnum Opus Not everybody’s getting these – I’m still seeing the world’s ugliest banner for an online darts game – but if you are, grab us a screenshot if you can. Better still, if you’re one of those advertising, let us know – because there’s been no announcement about this latest way to give eBay money publicity opportunity.

To mark the partnership, eBay is launching with a special charity auction in aid of youth charity, The Prince’s Trust. During January 30 InterContinental Hotel Presidential Suites will be sold on 99p no reserve auctions with 100% of the final price being donated through eBay for Charity.

The Octopus Travel shop will be promoted on eBay through a combination of paid search and targeted advertising across eBay.

eBay Advertising

eBay Advertising is a program where brands can offer compelling messages to the eBay community. The proposition is that as eBay users are primarily visiting the site to buy and sell, in general they are are more receptive to commercial messages than nearly anywhere else on the web. As a side bonus many of the campaigns also include an element of fund raising through eBay for Charity.

Previous campaigns have included The Sun Help The Heroes, which delivered 100 million banner impressions in 10 days, 7 million home page banner views, 712 thousand auction views and raised over £80,000 for the charity.

Mercedes promoted the Mercedes Benz E-Class and achieved 28 thousand opt ins to receive further marketing messages and finance brands such as Experian and Cetelem say that the click through rates for eBay media campaigns are much higher than adverts on other venues.

If you’ve been wondering what proposition eBay was selling to companies who have been purchasing banner ads on eBay then the eBay Advertising page is well worth a read. Do you think co-branded adverts with eBay and advertising partners are good for the site and will making eBay a great destination for hotel bookings increase sales for eBay sellers?

Possibly the most interesting question has to be whether the advertising partnerships are more important to eBay from a revenue perspective, or is the overriding aim to increase the value proposition of eBay to buyers and make the site more sticky?

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This particular add links to a landing page on Vodafone‘s Ad agency TGB‘s website.

So what do you think about off site ads on view item pages? It appears to be a very limited test at the moment – I’ve only been able to find the ads on a handful of listings. Do they appear on yours and if they did do you object to an off site ad at the foot of the page your listing appears on?

For your money you’ll not only get six perimeter advertising boards, but also the match sponsorship package also includes selecting the winner of the Man of the Match award and presenting them with champagne. The packed day includes a tour of the stadium and even six representatives from your party get to be invited onto the pitch to form a guard of honour for the arrival of the teams.

This is one auction that all the eBay third party providers should all be fighting to bid on, as well as Gumtree, Skype, PayPal and even eBay themselves.

In fact it was so quick I had to check the times on twitter to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. (I tweeted when it was listed, when the first phone call came and when it was sold).

Compared to the old days Gumtree is simple to use. No sending an ad to the local paper and waiting a couple of days for it to be printed. Gumtree has a much larger circulation area than a local paper (I listed the car on Reading Gumtree and then duplicated it on Oxford Gumtree). Even better as soon as the car had sold I could delete the ads from Gumtree to stop the phone calls and emails.

It was only this morning that I took the photos of the car, around midday the ad went live on Gumtree and by 3pm it was gone. I was asked (prior to the sale) why not list it on eBay Motors? To be honest I’m glad I didn’t – Gumtree is quick, easy, works well and possibly most important of all Gumtree is free!

I can’t promise that you’ll sell your car on Gumtree in under three hours, but I’d certainly recommend giving it a try. An auction on eBay Motors may get you the top price but it’ll take a week to sell and you’ll have fees to pay. Give Gumtree a try, if your car doesn’t sell you can always list it on eBay in a few days time.

Today the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA), a pan- European trade organisation for media companies, announced eight new members including eBay with Christian Kunz appointed to the EIAA board.

The primary objective of the EIAA is to champion and to improve the understanding of the value of online advertising as a medium, to grow the European interactive advertising market by proving its effectiveness, thus increasing its share of total advertising investment.

The EIAA members are AD Europe (Orange, United Internet Media, Libero), AdLINK Group, blinkx, CNN International, DoubleClick, Disney, eBay International Advertising, Gruner + Jahr, Linkedin, LYCOS Network Europe, Microsoft Advertising, MTV Networks International, Platform-A, PREMIUM PUBLISHERS ONLINE, Smartclip, Specific Media, wunderloop and Yahoo! Europe.

I guess this means that 3rd party adverts on eBay are not only here to stay, but that eBay are committed to punting off-line advertisers to investing in online adverts. To generate profit for eBay there’ll be no surprises as to where those online adverts will appear.

I’m not sure it would be enough to convince me to open a PayPal account, but advertising like this can only increase PayPal’s reputation and encourage more users to pay with PayPal when it’s offered as an online payment option.

It’s definitely interesting to see PayPal growing into a mainstream payment method and start to advertise off eBay and off the Internet.

There are ads everywhere on eBay now, from the eBay home page to search results pages, My eBay and on eBay tools such as Selling Manager Pro.

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Currently it’s little more than a collection of eBay’s biggest advertisers and you’ve probably seen all of the “offers” in the sidebar of My eBay at some time or another.

The deals and offers currently are simply plugs for the companies advertising. I could find only one with an offer, and that’s Parcel2Go who give a discount if you insert their logo into your eBay auctions. There aren’t any other deals or offers that you couldn’t get by going to the companies direct.

To build value (for both advertisers and eBay users) the companies featured in the eBay Partner Center need to have some real deals on offer.

Discounts, incentives or promotions specifically for eBay users may entice them to browse the Partner Center. A collection of adverts for off eBay products and services probably won’t.

You can let eBay know your thoughts on Partner Center by emailing them at servicecentrefeedback@ebay.com or clicking the link at the bottom of the Partner Center home page.

eBay’s online advertising accounts for 55.89% of their total media spend giving a total advertising budget in the region of £35m for 2007. It’s good to know they’re investing so much to attract buyers to the site. It also gives an indication of the budget competitors will need if they wish to compete for buyers in this marketplace.

In comparison Amazon was the ninth biggest spender with a £9.8m spend. This was an increase of 1977% from 2006 and represents almost 99% of Amazon’s total ad budget.

Mcdonalds, Sky, Capital One, Virgin and Dell are all ranked in the top 100 online advertisers and also advertise on ebay. It would be interesting to know just how much eBay recoup from advertising on eBay, from the top 100 spenders, to balance what they’re spending.

Via Brand Republic (log on required)

I’ve already had one question from a potential buyer who says they’ve just ordered an Inspiron 6400 for the price busting £299.00 and can I supply a docking station to go with it, so the advert is obviously working. But what’s the real impact?

Well for anyone who has been thinking of buying a laptop Dell have a really good deal on, comparing prices the 1.7GHz Inspiron 6400 on Dells website is selling out at £349.00 including VAT and shipping. The lowest price I can find the equivalent model on an eBay Buy It Now is £389.00 with £23.50 shipping to add on, a £63.50 saving for going to Dell then.

We’ve all seen the off site adverts at the bottom of search results, but they’re nowhere near as visible as the ones in My eBay. What will your thoughts be when your best selling lines are advertised in My eBay for off site deals?

On thing is for sure – if you’re in the market for a new laptop it’s a cracking deal, so go shopping while you can.

Why oh why do eBay find it incumbent upon themselves to carry on inflicting these adverts on us? It’s not like McDonalds is even a product which is vaguely business related. It’s simply gratuitous advertising because eBay decided they wanted more revenue.

I ask you honestly… what would you think of TameBay if we started carry adverts for fast food chains? Would it enhance your enjoyment of the site? Would it be the slightest bit relevant to your business? Or would it simply be an annoyance?

At least if we lowered ourselves into the advertising gutter that eBay have stooped to, you could justify it on the basis you don’t pay to use the site. But you do pay to use eBay, so as they have an income why the need to carry low grade irrelevant adverts?

Money I guess, purely and simply more income for shareholders. It doesn’t look good though, relevant ads I can understand, but I don’t want to wait for McDonalds adverts to load before I can use the drop downs in My eBay. Hello guys…. I’m trying to work here, not to snack on junk food

The drop downs in My eBay don’t load until after the advert has loaded, and they’re the last part of the page to load. Now a missing advert results in my browser waiting for a non-existant image from rtm.qa.ebaystatic.com.

Once the page has loaded it takes about fifteen seconds for the advert to time out and default to a text link, during which time drop downs are unavailable.

Whilst I understand adverts equal click revenue I find it hard to believe eBay make much revenue from them. Adverts irritate me at the best of time and even more so now they’re not working. eBay are wasting a quarter of a minute of my time for each visit to My eBay.

I thought eBay displaying adverts in My eBay was bad, now I’ve realised that eBay failing to display adverts is even worse

In November eBay confirmed that sponsored links were here to stay but the placement was still under review. If they negatively impacted eBay sales they said they would “react quickly should we detect negative trends” and it appears that they have done.

The important part of the statement is “We have analysed the latest data and have come to the same conclusion as many of you: sponsored links should not appear above Shop Inventory Format (SIF) items. (As a reminder, SIF listings currently appear in core search results when there are 50 or fewer core results returned.) So from now on whenever any eBay listings are available in response to a user’s search (be it core auction or BIN listings, SIF listings, or listings from international sellers) these will be shown first. Sponsored links will appear only underneath eBay listings.”

Another bit of news gleaned from the statement is that SIF listings will appear below core search results if fewer than 50 items are returned. In the past SIF listings appear to have been displayed if only 30 core listings were displayed in search results. From now on sellers should notice more sales from shop listings from the increased visibility.

But the prize for best version of the regifting story goes to a surprising winner: Tazbar. “Were your Christmas presents pants?” asks their email. And comes with this delightful image. Would could resist?

Question from Sue: Given that eBay are now displaying third party ads above shop results and “next page” links in search results, what percentage of my eBay budget should I be switching into Adwords?

Dan says: Of all the changes we’ve seen on eBay in the past few years, it’s fair to say that the increased display of third party ads in Search and Browse results (I’m less concerned about the ones in My eBay) is one of the most interesting and potentially damaging to eBay sellers. That said, to answer the question, I’d say, for the time being, none.

We really don’t know what the impact of the display ads in eBay search results is yet. And whilst, of course, Shops items are relegated it’s still true that ‘core’ BINs and Auctions get top billing so this is where I’d be concentrating time and energy. Are your non-Shop listings working hard enough? In many cases it’s a case of ‘back to basics’: are you listing enough ‘signpost’ listings that drag traffic to your Shop, are your Item Title keywords ship-shape and Bristol fashion, have you got your items spread out over the week to get maximum exposure?

On the general issue of these Ads, two things strike me. I really, genuinely think that buyers are clever enough to see through the tactic and give more attention to eBay items. That’s why they came to eBay, after all: to buy from eBay sellers. Equally, some of the ads I have seen have been very poorly targeted and matched to searches. Secondly, eBay might like the extra revenue from the ads but they won’t want to cannibalise their core market and revenue stream: I imagine they’re testing the waters to see how far they can go. It would be foolish to plan around any changes that haven’t been finalised.

To finish, running headlong toward an Adwords campaign isn’t something that you should take lightly. It can be complex process and you’ll need to spend time understanding how Adwords works, what works best for you and then spend time optimising your campaign. As with eBay, a bit of research and preparation time is essential to get it right so get tooled up with the info before you get your wallet out and hand it to Mr Google.