15 min article

Priority campaign strategy

Accelerate your sales and reach highly motivated buyers with the advanced targeting and price control over your ad spend when you promote your listing using the priority strategy.

eBay offers promoted listings campaign strategies for every type of seller. Learn more about what we offer on our Promoted Listings overview page

The priority strategy helps your listings reach highly motivated buyers with priority access to ad placements and advanced targeting. With precise control over your ad spend, you can effectively target your ads while paying only for clicks on your ads.

For each campaign using the priority strategy you run, you'll be charged for the clicks on your ads up to - but never more than - your campaign's daily budget. Once your campaign has reached its daily budget, your campaign will stop serving ads until the next day, when the daily budget resets. Any unused daily budget will not roll over to the next day.

Above Standard or Top Rated sellers with enough account activity can promote fixed price listings for most categories.

The following are not eligible for priority campaigns:

  • Auction listings and Auction listings with Buy It Now
  • Listings in Wholesale & Job Lots, Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles, Events Tickets, Property, E-Cigarettes, Vapes & Accs or Everything Else categories
  • Listings that are out of stock

Using the priority campaign strategy

You can promote your listings with the priority strategy from the Advertising dashboard, Active Listings, and through the advanced listing tool. Here's how to get started:

To promote your listings with the priority stategy from the Advertising dashboard - opens in new window or tab:

  1. Navigate to the Seller Hub, click on the Advertising tab.
  2. Select Create new campaign.
  3. Choose Promote your listings from the available ad type options.
  4. Select a Priority campaign strategy.
  5. Add listings to your campaign.
    • Manually select listings, create a rule for automatic selection, or enter item IDs to add listings
  6. Determine your targeting strategy.
    • Choose between Smart targeting, which automatically targets relevant buyers, or Manual targeting, where you use keywords and bids to target your ads
  7. Set your budget and bidding.
    • For Smart targeting, set a daily budget to be shared each day across all the listings in your campaign
    • For Manual targeting, decide to use a Dynamic bidding strategy or a Fixed bidding strategy. Review your ad groups, keywords, and keyword bids. Then, set a daily budget for your campaign
  8. Enter a Campaign name and set your Start date and End date.
  9. Launch your campaign.

Remember to regularly monitor your campaign's performance and adjust settings as necessary to remain competitive. If using Manual targeting, you can manually edit ad groups, add or remove listings, and set targeted and negative keywords. For dynamic bidding, your bids will update daily, but you can set a cap to control your ad rates. When you're finished making changes, save your settings and your campaign will be ready to go live.

 

To promote your listings with the priority strategy using the advanced listing tool:

  1. At the bottom of the Listing details page in the Promoted Listings section, enable the toggle next to the priority campaign strategy.
  2. Click Edit campaign to edit your daily budget and add this listing to an existing campaign or a new campaign.
  3. Select List item.
 

To promote your listings with the priority strategy from Seller Hub Active Listings - opens in new window or tab:

To promote individual listings with the priority strategy from Seller Hub Active Listings:

  1. Select Edit to open the actions dropdown menu next to Promote beside an eligible listing.
  2. Select Promote.
  3. Enable the toggle next to the priority campaign strategy.
  4. Select an existing campaign or create a new one.
  5. Set your campaign’s daily budget.
  6. Select Apply.

To stop promoting a listing at any time from Seller Hub Active Listings:

  1. Select the Actions dropdown menu beside the listing.
  2. Select Edit promoted listing.
  3. Disable the toggle next to the campaign strategy you’d like to turn off.
  4. Select Stop promoting.
  5. Select Apply to save your changes.

To promote listings using the priority campaign strategy in bulk from Seller Hub Active Listings:

  1. Check the boxes next to the listings you want to promote, or check the box at the top of your listings to select up to 200 listings at once.
  2. Select the Sell it faster dropdown above your listings.
  3. Select Promote your listing and then enable the priority campaign strategy.
  4. Select an existing campaign or create a new one.
  5. Set your campaign’s daily budget.
  6. Select Apply.
 

Priority campaign targeting strategy

A targeting strategy is a method used to determine how your ads will reach potential buyers. When promoting your listings with a priority campaign strategy, you’ll choose from one of two targeting strategies: Smart targeting or Manual targeting.

Smart targeting

Smart targeting enables easy setup when you promote your listings with a priority strategy. You’ll determine how much you pay each day and we’ll automatically target your ads. Your campaign will automatically update over time to optimise your ads. Here's how to get started:

  1. Navigate to the Seller Hub, click on the Advertising tab.
  2. Select Create new campaign.
  3. Choose Promote your listings from the available ad type options.
  4. Select a Priority campaign strategy.
  5. Add listings to your campaign.
  6. Select Smart targeting to automatically target your ads to buyers.
  7. Set a daily budget for your campaign and choose a maximum cost-per-click (CPC).
  8. Enter a Campaign name and set your Start date and End date.
  9. Launch your campaign.

Maximum cost-per-click

When you set up a priority campaign with smart targeting, you can edit your campaign’s maximum cost-per-click (maximum CPC). This setting determines the highest amount you are willing to pay for each click on an ad. The amount you pay for each click will be up to - but never more than - the maximum CPC you set.

The maximum CPC you choose is essentially your bid in an auction that determines ad placement. A higher bid (maximum CPC) increases the likelihood that your ad will win the auction and appear in a prominent position. This means that your listing is more likely to be shown and clicked on by potential buyers. Conversely, a lower maximum CPC might save you money per click but could result in your ad being shown less frequently, potentially leading to fewer overall sales.

Tip
Using smart targeting can help you save time while reaching your advertising goals.

Manual targeting

Manual targeting gives you advanced control with keyword targeting and bids, so you can determine how much each click on one of your ads is worth to you. You'll select how to manage ongoing optimisations to help your campaigns remain competitive. Here's how to get started:

  1. Navigate to the Seller Hub, click on the Advertising tab.
  2. Select Create new campaign.
  3. Choose Promote your listings from the available ad type options.
  4. Select a Priority campaign strategy.
  5. Add listings to your campaign.
  6. Select Manual targeting to use keywords to target your ads.
  7. Choose your bidding strategy: Dynamic bidding strategy or a Fixed bidding strategy.
  8. Review or manually edit your ad groups, keyword targeting, and keyword bids.
  9. Set a daily budget for your campaign.
  10. Enter a Campaign name and set your Start date and End date.
  11. Launch your campaign.

Ad groups

Ad groups help you build more effective manual targeting campaigns by organising your listings and keywords into a common goal or category. Grouping together similar listings allows you to target them with the same set of keywords.

Campaigns can have up to 500 ad groups and up to 1,000 listings in each ad group.

Example:

If you're creating an ad group containing inventory that you would like to promote for Father's Day:

  • Campaign: Father's Day
    • Daily budget: $500
      • Ad group: Best selling men's sneakers
      • Listings: High top sneakers, Running shoes
      • Keywords: Men's athletic shoes, high tops, best running shoes, popular men's sneakers
      • Ad group: Last season's men's athletic wear
      • Listings: Joggers, Sweatshirts, Shirts
      • Keywords: Fleece hooded sweatshirts, athleisure, quick dry t-shirt, high waisted jogger pants

Tip
We recommend 10-15 keywords per unique product type.

Keywords

Keywords are words or phrases used to target buyers with your priority ads using manual targeting. Use relevant keywords and add relevant search terms as keywords to help improve the visibility of your ads. Suggested keywords can help you identify queries buyers are using to look for items like yours.

You can also use negative keywords to prevent your ads from being matched to shopping journeys that include your negative keywords. Meaning, when a buyer searches for a term that you've added as a negative keyword, your ads will not be eligible for display. You’ll never be charged for negative keywords.

You can use up to 1,000 targeted keywords per ad group. Additionally, you can add up to 1,000 negative keywords per ad group.

Keyword match types

A keyword match type determines how closely your keyword needs to match a user’s shopping journey in order for your ad to be targeted to them.

Broad match matches your ads to keywords based on how related they appear to buyers’ shopping journeys.

Broad match can help you reach a wider audience with fewer keywords. For example, if you add the keyword "kid's shoes" with broad match to your campaign, your ads could show for search queries like "children's footwear".

Example:

One of your keywords is kid's shoes

  • Your ad may appear for:
    • Children's footwear
    • Toddler sneakers
  • Your ad will not appear for:
    • Women's shoes
    • Kid's coats

 

Phrase match allows your listings to appear when a buyer’s shopping journey includes your exact keyword and may include other words before and/or after your keyword.

Phrase match is designed to match your ad to a buyer journey where your keyword retains its original meaning. It will not appear for search phrases that add a word to the middle of your keyword.

Example:

One of your keywords is yellow socks

  • Your ad may appear for:
    • large yellow socks
    • yellow socks for kids
  • Your ad will not appear for:
    • yellow large socks
    • yellow kids socks
    • Kids socks yellow (Phrase match does not support word reordering)

 

Exact match  allows your listing to appear for search terms that match your keywords character-for-character with slight variations like misspellings, capitalisation, and abbreviations.

Example:

One of your keywords is electric shears

  • Your ad may appear for:
    • electric shear
    • Electric Shears
  • Your ad will not appear for:
    • electric scissors
    • red electric shears

 

Negative keywords

Negative exact match keywords are terms which are excluded from your ad group. Meaning, when a buyer searches for a term that you've added as a negative keyword, your Advanced ads will not be eligible for display.

Negative keywords are exact match without variants, meaning that for a keyword to be excluded, it needs to match the buyer's search term character-for-character.

Example:

One of your negative match keywords is yellow socks.

  • Your ad will only be excluded from buyers using that exact search term

 

Negative phrase match keywords will exclude your item from appearing for search terms that include your exact keyword and may include other words before and/or after your keyword, but not between 

Example:

One of your negative phrase match keywords is yellow socks:

  • Your ad will only be excluded from buyers using that exact search term, plus any search term that includes "yellow socks" with other terms either before or after the keyword
  • e.g. "large yellow socks" or yellow socks womens"

Bidding strategy

A campaign bidding strategy is the option you can select to determine how your keyword bids are managed throughout the duration of your campaign. There are two campaign bidding strategies you can choose from: fixed and dynamic.

A dynamic bidding strategy will automatically update keyword bids daily to the suggested bid. With this strategy, sellers do not need to make daily, manual updates to keep their keyword bids competitive in the marketplace.

Suggested bids are calculated based on a variety of factors that may include item attributes, seasonality, past performance and current competition to find an optimal balance between performance and cost.

A fixed bidding strategy will not change once it's been set. You can review your performance and update your campaign bidding strategy at any time.

Priority ad fees

Priority ad fees are based on your bid, the level of competition for queries in which your ad appears, and the clicks your ads have received.

For each campaign, the total ad fees charged each day for clicks on your priority ads cannot exceed the daily budget you set each day.

Here's how priority ad fees work:

  • The amount that you will be charged for each click is based on a second-price auction
  • All priority ad fees are charged at a listing level. Charges are determined by the sum of all cost-per-click clicks a single listing receives within a day
  • When you promote your listings with the priority strategy there are two ways to bid: manual targeting and smart targeting. With manual targeting, you select a keyword bid for each keyword and keyword match type combination. With smart targeting, your bids will automatically be applied for you subject to a maximum CPC you set
  • Because the listings, keywords and bids in each second price auction are unique, each cost-per-click calculation is dynamic
  • Sales will be attributed within a 30-day window of a click on your ad

While it is possible to be charged for multiple legitimate clicks from the same buyer, we have checks in place to filter out invalid clicks. If clicks on an ad are identified as invalid, you will not be charged. Note that you will also be charged if you click on your own priority ad.

Viewing your fees

  • Fees for your promoted listings campaigns using the priority campaign strategy will appear as "Promoted Listings - Priority fees" in your Payments tab or on your seller invoice
  • We combine all clicks a seller receives on a priority ad in a given campaign on a daily basis and sellers are generally charged for these clicks up to 72 hours after the clicks take place
  • Your charges are reported at a listing level. From your Payments tab or invoice, you'll see the campaign ID, click date, total number of clicks, and average cost-per-click per listing

The daily campaign cost is calculated by multiplying the total number of clicks received per keyword by their respective price. The daily budget is the maximum amount that you're willing to spend on a single campaign per day.

Once your campaign has reached its daily budget, your campaign will stop serving ads until the next day, when the daily budget resets. Any unused daily budget will not roll over to the next day.

Examples:

Daily budget not reached:

  • Daily budget is $500
  • On a given day, Keyword A (average cost-per-click of $2.50) receives 100 clicks, and Keyword B (average cost-per-click of $2.00) receives 50 clicks, which brings the daily campaign cost to $350. The remaining $150 will not roll over to the next day

Daily budget reached:

  • Daily budget is $500
  • On a given day, Keyword A (average cost-per-click of $2.50) receives 100 clicks, and Keyword B (average cost-per-click of $2.00) receives 125 clicks, which brings the daily campaign cost to $500. Since the daily budget has been reached, your ads will stop serving and your campaign will resume the next day

 

Updates to your daily budget are made in real time. If you update your daily budget below what has already been spent, your ads will stop serving and your new daily budget will go into effect the next day.

Listings in a campaign will be eligible to begin surfacing again if you increase the daily budget of an out-of-budget campaign.

  • If you update your daily budget below what has already been spent, your ads will stop serving and your new daily budget will go into effect the next day
  • There is a $1 minimum and a $1,000,000 maximum daily budget

Monitoring your campaigns

Advertising and Campaign dashboards

Once you have activated a campaign, you can view the performance of all of your Promoted Listings campaigns from the Advertising dashboard - opens in new window or tab.

Your Campaign dashboard lets you see detailed ad group-level, keyword-level, and listing-level reporting for each individual campaign. While on the Campaign dashboard you can make edits quickly within the context of your performance. To find the Campaign dashboard:

  1. Go to your Advertising dashboard - opens in new window or tab.
  2. Click on the campaign name in the Campaign overview section of the page.

On the Campaign dashboard and Advertising dashboard you can monitor:

  • Impressions – The number of times your ads have appeared on any eBay site
  • Clicks – The number of interactions with your ads
  • Quantity sold – The number of items purchased within 30 days of a click on your ads
  • Sales – Sales revenue generated within 30 days of a click on your ads. Includes item price, postage, taxes, any other applicable fees, and returned or cancelled transactions
  • Ad fees – Ad fees incurred by your promoted listings. When using a general strategy, ad fees are incurred by your items sold within 30 days of a click on your ads. When using a priority strategy, ad fees are incurred by clicks on your ads. Visit the Payments tab for final fees, including any applicable taxes or credits
  • Sales conversion rate - Quantity sold divided by clicks, multiplied by 100
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS) – Your sales, divided by ad fees
  • Average cost-per-click (CPC) – Total cost of clicks divided by total clicks

Campaign name, Status, Start and End date, and listings are updated in real time, as those events are happening. Performance metrics are reported in near-real time though they may take up to 72 hours to reconcile.

Campaign recommendations

Campaign recommendations will appear at the top of your Advertising dashboard and provide customised tips to help you optimise your advertising campaigns for performance. These recommendations are updated daily based on your campaign’s performance, eBay’s historical data and best practises.

Getting started with campaign recommendations is easy:

  1. Go to your Advertising dashboard - opens in new window or tab.
  2. If there are any opportunities to improve your advertising campaigns, you will see your recommendations at the top of the page.
  3. Review and implement any or all of the recommendations for your advertising campaigns by clicking on the recommendation.

Check your Advertising dashboard regularly for new recommendations and apply changes to campaigns.

Downloading and scheduling reports

From Seller Hub, you can download and schedule search query, keyword-level and listing-level reports for each of your priority campaigns, here's how:

Downloading reports from the Advertising tab

  1. Go to the campaign overview section in your Advertising dashboard - opens in new window or tab.
  2. Find the campaign you’d like to download a report for, and expand the menu in the Actions column.
  3. Select Generate listing report, Generate keyword report, or Generate search query report.

After launching your campaign, allow up to 72 hours for some reporting metrics to appear in downloaded reports. Campaign details and reporting will be in the time zone for the site your campaigns were created in.

Downloading reports from the Reports tab

You can also save time by scheduling and downloading reports from the Seller Hub Reports tab by downloading reports at the account level and for multiple campaigns at once.

  1. Go to Seller Hub Reports - opens in new window or tab.
  2. Select Download.
  3. Select Download report.
  4. Select the following report parameters:
    • Source → Advertising
    • Campaign strategy → Promoted Listings - Priority
    • Type → Keyword, Listing, Campaign or Search query

Scheduling reports from the Reports tab

  1. Go to Seller Hub Reports - opens in new window or tab.
  2. Select Schedule.
  3. Select Schedule report.
  4. Create a download schedule by selecting the following report parameters:
    • Source → Advertising
    • Campaign strategy → Promoted Listings - Priority
    • Type → Keyword, Listing, Campaign or Search query
    • Frequency → Daily, Weekly or Monthly

Tip
Visit the Seller Centre - opens in new window or tab to learn more about promoting your listings with the priority strategy.

Priority campaign strategy FAQs

How is it determined when and where my ads will show?

Your bid amount is a factor in determining how frequently your listing appears in placements across eBay. The more competitive the bid, the more likely your listing appears in an eligible ad slot.

Priority campaigns offer two ways to bid: manual targeting and smart targeting. With manual targeting, you select the bid amount. With smart targeting, eBay will bid for you subject to a maximum CPC you set.

Your bid is entered into a second price auction to determine which ads are shown to buyers and how much you’re charged for each click on your ad. If you win the auction, your ad may appear in an eligible ad slot and you’ll be charged an amount between the next highest bid and your bid for each click on your ad. You won’t be charged more than your daily budget each day or your bid for each click on your ad, regardless of the targeting strategy you select for your campaign.

 

Campaign management FAQs

Once I've launched a campaign, can I change from a smart targeting to manual targeting campaign, and vice versa?

You cannot change your priority campaign’s targeting strategy from smart targeting to manual targeting, and vice versa, after your campaign has launched.

 
How do I add listings to my campaign?

When adding listings to your campaign, you have a few options depending on which targeting strategy you’re using. All campaigns can use manual listing selection and bulk listing selection. Priority campaigns using smart targeting can use manual, bulk, and rule-based listing selection.

With manual listing selection, you select individual listings and have the flexibility to adjust your campaign as needed. Manual listings selection is recommended for sellers looking for the most control over their listing selection.

Bulk listing selection is an efficient way to create and manage large campaigns by copying and pasting a list of item IDs. Bulk listing selection is recommended for sellers with large inventories.

Use rule-based listing selection to automate listing selection and save time managing your priority campaigns using smart targeting. You can use brand, category, price, and condition filters to define a rule that will add current and future listings to your campaign. Rule-based listing selection is recommended for sellers with dynamic inventory and who wish to minimise their campaign management time.

For example, a rule you create could add all men’s shoes and women’s shoes from any brand, priced between $60-$100 and whose condition is new to your campaign. As listings are added to your campaign, eBay will use smart targeting to optimise your campaign bidding and targeting.

 
What are recommended listings?

Recommended listings are those that have the most potential to drive sales based on eBay's historical data.

 
What are suggested keywords and can I choose my own?

Suggested keywords are search terms that we've determined are relevant and likely to perform well in your ad group.

We evaluate keywords based on how frequently they've been used in recent searches and how relevant those searches are to the listings in your ad group. These keyword suggestions are designed to help you target buyers who are actively looking for items like yours.

You can monitor your keyword performance on your Campaign dashboard or by downloading keyword-level reports for each campaign. Remove any low-performing keywords and replace them with new suggested keywords to further optimise your campaign.

 
What is the suggested bid and the bid range?

Our suggested bids and bid ranges are based on a number of factors, including past performance, competition, and marketplace trends. Using the suggested bids and bid ranges can help take the guesswork out of setting competitive bids.

Suggested bids and bid ranges can change over time, so we suggest monitoring your campaign performance and making any needed changes to remain competitive.

There is a $0.02 minimum and $100 maximum bid for keywords.

 
Am I able to bid on trademarked terms as keywords?

We don't restrict trademarked terms as keywords. If a listing isn't relevant for a particular branded query, however, the priority ad for that listing is not likely to show. Our algorithms are designed with proprietary relevance and performance filters in place, which means that ads will only appear if they pass our relevancy filters and will only continue to show if buyers actually engage with them.

If you believe that any content in which you claim trademark ownership has been infringed by anyone using eBay's services, please notify our VeRO team through the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program and eBay will investigate your notice.

 

Reporting and billing FAQs

Will I always be charged my full daily budget?

No. The daily budget is the maximum amount that you're willing to spend on a single priority campaign per day. Some days you may spend less than your daily budget, but you will never be charged more than the amount you choose. Once your campaign has reached its daily budget, your campaign will stop serving ads until the next day, when the daily budget resets. Any unused daily budget will not roll over to the next day.

For example, if your daily budget is $100, your average cost-per-click is $1, and your ad is clicked 40 times in one day, you will be charged $40 for that day. The next day, your daily budget will still be $100, since unused daily budget will not roll over.

  • Note: Depending on your country, the corresponding VAT rate can be applied to your advertising fees. Unless you registered as a business account and provided your tax registration details, we'll add VAT to your advertising fees
  • If your registered address is in Australia, Australian GST is payable on your advertising fees. Unless you registered as a business account and provided your tax registration details, we'll add GST to your advertising fees
 
Why is my campaign performance decreasing even though I haven't made any changes?

A number of factors can cause changes in your campaigns' visibility, clicks or sales, including buyer traffic or demand, seasonality, changes to the competitive landscape, general platform changes, and more.

Selecting the right keywords and setting competitive bids on keywords is crucial (to help optimise campaigns, we provide you with suggested bids and bid ranges for all suggested keywords). Improving the quality of your listings may also increase the chances of your ads performing well.

You should also keep an eye on your campaign performance to ensure your ad groups remain effective. Suggested keywords and bids can change over time, so we suggest monitoring your campaign performance and making any needed changes to remain competitive

 

The priority campaign strategy uses a cost-per-click model, which means that you pay per click on your ads.

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