On September 29, eBay opened Promoted Stores Custom to every eligible seller with an active eBay Store subscription.[1] Until this week it was limited to a small group of sellers.[1]
Here's the short version. If you pay for an eBay Store, you can now build a store ad around listings you pick yourself, and send the click to a page you pick yourself. Before this, eBay built most of the campaign for you, and you were mostly limited to pointing the ad at a Store category or an active coupon.[2]
That is a real upgrade, and the timing makes sense. eBay's own holiday research says more than half of holiday shoppers plan to start browsing by October or earlier.[8]
It is also a pay-per-click ad with a budget rule that has already caught sellers off guard. So before you click Launch, here is what changed, what it costs, and how to set one up without it eating the margin it was supposed to grow.
What Changed on September 29
Promoted Stores is an ad for your whole Store, not one listing. The ad shows your store name, logo, a headline, several of your listings, and a link to your Store.[3] eBay says these ads can show up in places like the top of search results and on product pages.[7]
Until now you had two ways to build one. You could highlight one Store category or one coupon per campaign, and eBay chose which listings appeared in the ad based on how they had performed.[3][7]
Custom adds a third way. With a custom campaign you can:
- Select up to 1,000 listings for the campaign.[1]
- Choose up to ten featured listings to show in the ad itself.[1]
- Send buyers to a landing page that fits the campaign, such as a Store page, a sales event, or a curated collection.[1]
Value Added Resource reports that the landing page choices also include eBay Live event pages and influencer pages from eBay's Ambassador program.[2] Most resellers will live in the first three.
Nothing was taken away. The category and coupon options are still there, and Custom sits next to them as another choice during setup.[1]
You Pay for the Click, Not the Sale
Get this part straight first, because it works the opposite way from the ads most resellers already run.
Promoted Listings with the general strategy charges a percentage of the sale. You only pay when a promoted item sells within 30 days of a click on your ad.[6]
Promoted Stores is cost per click. You pay for clicks on the ad, whether or not anyone buys.[3] The price of each click is set in an auction. It depends on your bid, what other sellers bid, your selling history on eBay, and a reserve price, which is the minimum eBay has decided a click is worth.[3]
A store ad that gets plenty of clicks and no sales still sends you a bill. A general Promoted Listings campaign in the same spot costs you nothing.
That doesn't make store ads a bad deal. It means they reward one kind of inventory: listings that already sell when people see them. Paying to send buyers to stale, overpriced, or thinly described listings just means paying eBay to show shoppers why they shouldn't buy from you.
The Budget Is a Monthly Number, Not a Daily One
This is where sellers get burned.
When you set up a Promoted Stores campaign, you enter a target daily budget. It reads like a hard cap. It isn't.
Since October 28, 2025, eBay has paced Promoted Stores spending across the whole calendar month.[4] On a busy day your campaign can spend up to double your daily target. On a slow day it spends less. Across the month, total spend can't go above 30.4 times your daily target.[4]
eBay's own examples make it concrete:[4]
- A $10 target daily budget can spend up to $20 on a single day.
- A campaign started on January 15 with a $10 target can spend up to $170 for the rest of that month.
- A campaign that has already spent $150, then gets raised from $10 to $15 a day, has a new monthly total of $405.
Run that math for a full month and a $10 daily target means a ceiling of $304.
You might spot a line in eBay's help page that says a campaign stops serving ads for the day once it reaches its target daily budget.[3] That line sits in the fees section. The same page has a separate budget pacing section, and eBay's pacing announcement is clear about the double-spend days.[3][4] Plan around the monthly number. That's the one that shows up on your invoice.
This isn't a made-up worry. Earlier this year, Value Added Resource reported sellers saying their Promoted Stores and priority campaigns were spending up to double their daily budgets, including one seller with a $100 daily budget who was being charged $200 a day.[5] The rule allowing it sat behind an easy-to-miss "Learn more" link.[5]
The fix is simple. Decide the most you're willing to spend on this campaign this month. Divide it by 30.4. That's your daily target. Then check the campaign every few days for the first week.
Pick Listings That Can Earn a Paid Click
Choosing the listings is the whole point of Custom. Room for 1,000 is generous, but most resellers will do better with a much shorter list.
Start with listings buyers already notice. Watchers and views with no sale yet are a useful signal. The item is easy to find and people are interested, but something about the price or the presentation is holding them back. Fix that first, then advertise it.
Run every candidate through four quick checks:
- Is the price right against recent sold listings? The click costs you money no matter what happens next. If the buyer lands and sees the same item cheaper two listings down, you paid for a price comparison.
- Are the photos and title doing their job? Featured listings appear inside the ad itself, so their photos and titles are your ad creative.[1][3] A dim first photo or a vague title wastes the placement.
- Is there margin left after fees and a few clicks? On a low-priced item, a handful of clicks can wipe out the profit. Store ads make more sense on higher-ticket items and on inventory that tends to sell in multiples.
- Is it in hand and ready to ship? Holiday buyers who click an ad expect the item to move fast.
Pick your ten featured listings last. They should be the most recognizable, best-photographed items in the set, because they're what a shopper sees before deciding whether to click at all.
Send the Click Somewhere Worth Landing
The second new control is where the buyer ends up. It matters more than it sounds.
A click that drops a shopper on your Store homepage asks them to do the work. A click that lands on a sale or a curated collection tells them exactly why they clicked.[1]
A few setups that fit how resellers sell in the fourth quarter:
- A sales event page. If you're running a holiday markdown, point the campaign at it. The buyer sees the discount the moment they land.
- A curated collection. Group one theme: vintage holiday decor, cast iron, wool outerwear, sealed video games. One clear theme gives a shopper a reason to keep browsing instead of fifty unrelated reasons to leave.
- One Store category. If you have one deep category, the original category option still works and takes less setup.[3]
eBay pitches Custom for seasonal inventory, new arrivals, priority products, and promotions.[1] Whatever you pick, give each campaign one clear idea. A buyer should be able to tell what the campaign is about from the ten featured items alone.
A Holiday Store Campaign You Can Set Up This Week
Here's a simple sequence for a first campaign.
- In Seller Hub, open the Advertising tab, create a Promoted Stores campaign, and choose Custom during setup.[1]
- Add the listings that passed your four checks. A few dozen well-priced items is plenty for a first test.
- Choose your ten featured listings.[1]
- Pick the landing page. A sales event or a curated collection beats your Store homepage for a seasonal push.[1]
- Set the target daily budget from your monthly limit divided by 30.4.[4]
- Preview the campaign before you launch it. eBay lets you check your listings, featured items, and landing page in a preview first.[1]
- Leave it alone for two weeks. eBay says Promoted Stores results can take up to 14 days to fill in, because quantity sold, sales, and return on ad spend keep updating, and it recommends running at least two weeks before making major changes.[3]
That two-week wait is why the calendar matters. A campaign launched in the first week of October gives you readable numbers by the middle of the month, with time left to adjust before the bigger shopping weeks.
When you do read the results, eBay reports clicks, click-through rate, average cost per click, sales conversion rate, quantity sold, ad sales, ad fees, and return on ad spend.[7] Ignore most of that at first. Ask one question: were the ad fees smaller than the profit on the sales the campaign brought in? If not, cut the weakest listings, tighten the theme, or stop.
When to Skip Store Ads
Store ads aren't for every reseller, and saying no is a fine answer.
Skip it if you don't have a Store subscription. Custom is only open to sellers with an active Store.[1]
Skip it if most of your inventory is low-ticket. When the profit on a sale is a few dollars, paying for clicks that may not convert is a hard way to make money.
Skip it if cash is tight going into the holidays. A pay-per-click ad spends before it earns. A general Promoted Listings campaign only charges when something sells.[6]
And skip it if your listings don't sell well on their own yet. Ads magnify whatever is already true about a listing. Fix the price, the photos, and the title, then come back.
If you already run general Promoted Listings on the same items, keep the two separate in your head and your spreadsheet. They bill differently, so judge each one on its own numbers.
How ListForge Gets Your Listings Ready to Advertise
A store ad is only as good as the listings it points at. ListForge doesn't build Promoted Stores campaigns. You set those up in Seller Hub. What ListForge does is the prep work that decides whether a paid click turns into a sale.
- See which listings buyers already notice. On each live eBay listing, ListForge shows watchers, views, and click-through rate for the last seven days, plus whether the listing is in Promoted Listings and at what ad rate. That's a ready-made shortlist for your featured ten.
- Check the price against real comps. Each item's research shows the comparable listings behind the suggested price, split into exact matches and close variants, so you can see whether your price holds up before you pay for traffic.
- Know your margin before you buy a click. Enter what you paid, and Profit Projections estimate the price, profit, and margin for each connected marketplace using that marketplace's fees. That tells you which items can afford a few clicks and which can't.
- Listings that look like ads already. Titles lead with brand and model and stay within eBay's 80 character limit, item specifics are filled in alongside them, and background removal cleans up a cluttered first photo.
- Pay-per-sale promotion with a ceiling you set. If you'd rather stick with ads that only charge on a sale, Sale Manager's Visibility setting uses Promoted Listings up to the maximum ad rate you choose, so you pay only when a promoted click leads to a sale.
Paid traffic is the easy part to buy. Listings worth the click are the part you have to build, and that's the part ListForge handles.
Try ListForge free at https://list-forge.ai
Sources
[1] https://community.ebay.com/forum/announcements-57928/topic/promoted-stores-custom-is-now-available-483310 - Promoted Stores Custom is now available (eBay Seller News, September 29, 2026) [2] https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-expands-custom-promoted-stores-ads - eBay Opens Custom Promoted Stores Ads To All Sellers (Value Added Resource, September 29, 2026) [3] https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/ebay-advertising/promoted-stores?id=5472 - Promoted Stores (eBay Help) [4] https://www.ebay.com/ads/blog/seller-announcement-monthly-budget-pacing-ps - Introducing monthly budget pacing for Promoted Stores (eBay Advertising) [5] https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-promoted-stores-priority-ads-overspending-daily-budgets - eBay Sellers Report Promoted Stores and Priority Ads Overspending Daily Budgets (Value Added Resource) [6] https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/ebay-advertising/promoted-listings?id=5295 - Promoted Listings (eBay Help) [7] https://export.ebay.com/en/services-tools/advertising/promoted-stores - Promoted Stores (eBay Seller Center) [8] https://pages.ebay.com/2026-seller-holiday-resources - 2026 Seller Holiday Resources (eBay)