"Premium" scam, uh, ad – loss of control through "consolidated placement data everywhere" | Seller Lounge

yodaco · 2026-04-02T18:19:15.540000Z

Hello everyone, I need to vent a bit here about Ads Premium (CPC). That the system is questionable anyway, fine – but the lack of control over the actual spend is simply outrageous. I actually set up my campaign properly:Carefully selected keywords.Manual bids stored for each keyword.Daily budget capped at €7.00 for safety.The performance of my own keywords is also completely fine. Impressions are only between 0 and 140, and the ACOS is in a top range between 3.46% and 9.62%. So far, everything is under control. The problem:After a few days of running, I took a closer look at the analysis and was almost shocked when I saw the item „Consolidated data of placements everywhere on eBay“. While my keywords are being shown in a targeted way, this line is burning through the budget on a massive scale: Impressions: 18,795 😲ACOS: 15.67% 😲😲😲 The worst thing about it: you have absolutely no control over it. You optimize your keywords, fine-tune the bids, and then eBay puts the ad somewhere into the “consolidated placements,” where the money disappears without the intended control.What I actually want is for my budget to be used for the terms I booked, and not for some opaque spread across the whole portal that pushes my ACOS up unnecessarily. Have you had similar experiences with these “ghost placements”? Is there any trick to completely disable this area, or do you just have to swallow it again when you use "Premium"? Looking forward to your feedback.

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