eBay Watermarks Policy Change: Update

In September, we reported eBay’s new ‘Picture Policy’ update. Notably, their intention to enforce the removal of listings that contained images with eBay watermarks.

Since then, eBay have received a lot of negative criticism. Particularly, from individual sellers and focus groups, which they seemed to have listen to. So, they have taken the decision not to enforce the policy but keep it in place “as guidance only”.

However, this stay of enforcement may only be temporary. That is, as they maintain the benefits to eBay and sellers are very clear. Also, greater visibility of listings in Google and Bing Shopping campaigns.

Ebay’s Watermark Statement

Please see Ebay’s full statement below:

In our update to business sellers in September, we announced that listings with watermarked images would be removed from eBay search results from 1 March 2018.

We know that this has been an important topic and thank those sellers who took the time to contact us and explain the challenges they had with it.

We encourage our sellers to use clean images because, when watermarks are in place, we cannot typically promote their listings on platforms outside eBay, such as Google and Bing.

We’ve also heard from customers directly in focus groups that they are more likely to buy from us when product photography is on a white background and uncluttered.

Having listened to our sellers’ views on this, we’ve decided not to enforce this policy and to keep it in place as guidance only.

Thank you again for using eBay. The views of the people who sell with us are absolutely essential as we continue to evolve eBay for buyers and sellers.

It is great that eBay have listen to their customers and given them time to make these updates. However, we expect eBay will set another date on which they will begin enforcing this policy soon. So, we recommend all sellers start or continue to remove eBay watermarks.

We will continue to keep you up to date of any future developments.