eBay sellers this week have discovered one of the first major results of the handshake between Yahoo! and eBay that happened back in May: targeted ads that appear (for now) only on search result pages that yield no items. Apparently, many of the sellers who complained to eBay had no prior knowledge these ads were being introduced, but eBay's North American president Bill Cobb stated in May that the ads would be for complementary products and services.And therein lies the problem: sellers are finding that not only do the ads lead buyers away from searching and shopping at eBay, but they seem to do the exact opposite of what Mr. Cobb promised, offering products and services that are, in fact, competing.
An eBay spokesperson stated that these ads are currently in a testing phase, so the system that dictates which ads appear when and where is definitely still on the drawing board. If anything is to be learned from this development, however, it is probably this: eBay sellers, try to sell products that are easy to spell, otherwise your potential customers might be led somewhere else due to a missed letter and a well-targeted Yahoo! ad.
[via AdJab]
