eBay to limit Google ad spend

eBay has resumed advertising on Google after the two companies’ well-publicised clash earlier this month, but all is not forgiven.

The online auction company said it would use Google’s ad platforms in a “much more limited way” and focus more on rival ad services.

eBay, one of Google’s biggest PPC clients, yanked its advertising earlier this month in protest at Google’s plan to hold a promotional event for its Checkout payment system outside eBay’s annual conference for merchants in Boston.

The idea was to lobby eBay to allow Checkout to compete with eBay's Paypal system on the auction site, but backfired royally. The ban remained in place despite Google’s event being cancelled.

eBay then increased its ad spend on Yahoo!., Ask and MSN in what it called an “ongoing experiment” into how it promoted its auctions across different media channels.

Announcing its return to Google on Friday, spokesperson Hani Durzy told Reuters that eBay’s use of the search engine would be “much more limited” than before, adding:

“What we found is that we were not as dependent on AdWords as some people thought."

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