MarketingSherpa’s blog has a post about ebay and paid search. Interesting enough, the VP of Internet Marketing talks about his battles. Yes, even he has battles. One is convincing people that it pays to buy the keyword “eBay”.  Over and over it has proven profitable. eBay spends more on paid search (PPC) than almost anyone in the world.

Sometimes internet marketing demands a new mindset. I have had my battles about the long tail. People can’t get it out of their minds that it’s worth paying for keywords that aren’t generating a lot of clicks, even if those clicks convert at 50%! I got so beat up over that one and ultimately had to follow what my boss said and not increase the keyword buy even though I was dying to.

eBay has a database of over 250 MILLION keywords. They are actively bidding on 5 to 15 MILLION at one time. At times they have to prove to Google that the words are relevant. They have many terms that they pay 1 cent on.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=29783 – has a link to a podcast interview with eBay and others (bad quality sound, good quality info)

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