eBay vs. Google: Google Protests, eBay Pulls U.S. Adwords

By Li Evans

A collective sigh of relief can be heard from a lot of online marketers right now.  eBay's pulled all of their U.S. ads on the Adwords network.  According to Computer World and other industry blogs,  eBay spokesman Hani Durzy characterized the decision to pull the U.S. Google ads as "an instance in a continued experiment eBay does to determine the best allocation of its advertising and marketing budget."

eBay's rather notorious for there ads on every imaginable keyword out there.  At one point you could even buy "Danny Sullivan" on eBay.  That was at least, according to their paid advertising if your searched for information on Danny.  One of the most annoying things for almost all online marketers is dealing with EBay and its very broad marketing campaigns, tonight at least for a little while, perhaps campaigns might see some relief with not having to compete with eBay.

With saying that, you might be wondering why eBay's "really" pulled there ads. 

Speculation is circulating around the fact that Google is was sponsoring a party this week in Boston that coincides with eBay Live.  The Google party's main focus is was to basically protest the fact that eBay still does not accept Google Checkout as a payment method.

Now word comes from TechCrunch that Google's canceled the party.   

And also Google's just released a statement:

"eBay Live attendees have plenty of activities to keep them busy this week in Boston, and we did not want to detract from that activity. After speaking with officials at eBay, we at Google agreed that it was better for us not to feature this event during the eBay Live conference."

It really just doesn't seem like Google's week for good news, does it?

Update:  Brian Smith over at ComparisonEngines says he thinks the eBay ads are back up, some others are saying they are seeing ads now too.  I did a few searches for "digital camera", "danny sullivan", "shoes",  and even "online auctions" and eBay didn't come up at all.  The only thing I can find them coming up for was "eBay".

Comments

[Gavin]

I was glad to hear this new, those eBay ads had become very annoying at times. Advertising things that were not for sale i.e. Danny Sullivan - I would buy him for a dollar though. :-)

I see eBay.co.uk still has a campaign up at this end.

[Abela]

I really like this. Ebay ads are really annoying.