eBay changed how it optimizes sellers’ ad budgets, an industry practice called “budget pacing,” as explained on Google Ads. eBay informed advertisers that starting June 18, 2025, “we’ll introduce budget pacing for priority campaigns and transition from weekly to monthly budget averaging, offering greater flexibility and optimization opportunities.”
Sellers set a daily budget for priority campaigns, but budget pacing allows the ad platform (in this case eBay) to consider various factors in order to optimize the ad spend, spending more on some days and less on others.
Budget pacing only applies to eBay priority campaigns, which is a cost-per-click model (sellers pay when someone clicks on their ad, whether or not that person makes a purchase). eBay explains ad types on its eBay Advertising website and provided a guide to Priority campaigns in the following video published on YouTube:
As eBay explained in its May 30th announcement, “Your target daily budget will serve as a guideline for calculating your potential monthly spend. We will optimize spending across the month, helping you spend more of your advertising budget on high-opportunity days and less on others. This approach ensures your campaigns are more effective, leveraging busy periods for better results.”
eBay said it leverages machine learning and traffic signals to optimize sellers’ budgets, “helping to deliver maximum return on ad spend” (ROAS in ad-speak.)
It takes into account several variables using real-time platform data and forecasted traffic to anticipate periods of high engagement, such as Black Friday, and considers historical data and seasonal trends. “Our systems also account for factors like current market trends and category-specific traffic to shift your advertising budget to times with better sales potential.”
Changes are made on the fly: “Our pacing algorithm dynamically adjusts daily spend based on traffic, competition, and performance opportunities to maximize results within your budget constraints. This ensures efficient use of your budget throughout the month.”
eBay provided the following example:
“If your campaign had a target daily budget of $10 your campaign could spend up to $20 on any given day, however you wouldn’t be charged more than $304 for this campaign over the course of the month. We define a month as a calendar month, meaning it begins on the first day and ends on the last day of the month, regardless of the number of days in that month. For budgeting calculations, we use an average of 30.4 days to account for varying month lengths.”
To be clear, eBay may exceed a seller’s target daily budget on some days, up to double the highest target daily budget in effect on that day, but balances that by spending less on other days to ensure the monthly budget limit is not exceeded over the course of the entire month.