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Program news

We hope everyone is well. We want to take this time to share with you some updates that occurred within the eBay Developers Program over the last quarter.

All developers must act on Marketplace Account Deletion notifications

All developer applications within the eBay Developers Program are required to either subscribe to eBay marketplace account deletion/closure notifications or follow the process to opt out of subscribing to these notifications. Developers can only choose to opt out if they do not store any eBay data for various reasons. For more information on opting out, see the Opting Out of eBay Marketplace Account Deletion/Closure Notifications section in this document.

The Marketplace Account Deletion page contains the information and instructions for subscribing to these notifications.

Existing developers that do not comply with this requirement immediately risk losing access to the Developer Tools, and/or reduced access to all or some APIs.

A .NET Event Notification SDK was added to the list of SDKs that support subscribing to and handling marketplace account deletion notifications. The other SDKs include a Java Event Notification SDK and a Node.js Event Notification SDK.

Two new events now available on Notifications platform

PLA_CAMPAIGN_BUDGET_STATUS becomes the first user-based notification that sellers can subscribe to through the Notification API. All notifications on the new Notifications platform support JSON format.

Once a seller subscribes to the PLA_CAMPAIGN_BUDGET_STATUS topic using the Notification API, that seller will receive this notification whenever the daily budget for a Promoted Listing Advanced campaign is exceeded. See the Notification API documentation for more information about subscribing to notifications.

The second new notification, AUTHORIZATION_REVOCATION, is an application-based notification that will be sent to the provided webhook if the application's authorization token is revoked for any reason.

Popularity of listing videos growing

More and more sellers are using videos in their listings, and buyers are starting to engage more and more with these videos. About a quarter of the potential buyers who engage with the image carousel click on and watch the video. For more information, please visit the Managing videos page on the developer portal.

New Item Translation Widget

A new open-source Translation Widget is now available. The widget is a customizable component for React applications that is used to translate the eBay item title and description to another language. It provides a responsive UI experience with two different modes:

  • Translation by Text: In this mode, select Item Title or Item Description, and then simply copy-and-paste an actual title or description into the left text box and click the Translate button.
  • Translation by eBay item number: This more robust mode leverages the Browse API to fetch the item title and description. Simply input an Item ID for an active listing and then click the Translate button. As long as the item is found, both the item title and item description will be translated automatically.

This open-source widget is available in both GitHub and NPM at the following locations:

Assets for Login with eBay are available

Button assets for Sign in with eBay are now available. The graphics package includes various sizes of button graphics for Android, iOS and web in both dark and light versions. Create a great user experience through the Sign in with eBay option.

Reminder of Certificate Authority change

eBay is switching the certificate authority (CA) used for public certificates from DigiCert to Sectigo (previously Comodo). Sectigo certificates are already supported in Sandbox, and the switchover in the Production environment will happen in January 2022.

API updates

The following updates have been made to public APIs over the last few months.

Sell Marketing API now supports coded coupons

Developers integrated with the Sell Marketing API can now configure coded coupon campaigns for listings using the createItemPromotion method. Coded coupon campaigns are immensely popular and one of the fastest velocity drivers ever at eBay!

Coded coupons enable sellers to offer buyers a discount through a customized coupon code. Sellers can choose to make coded coupons fully public (appearing on View Item and other pages on eBay sites) or private, and can reach out to potential buyers through their own marketing channels. See this landing page for more information on coded coupons, including how to create/customize them, and tips on how to share them whether public or private.

Coded coupons are available to eBay Store subscribers in the following marketplaces: US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Australia.

Trading API updated to support three new refurbished conditions

Three new refurbished item conditions are now supported in the Add/Revise/Relist/Verify calls of the Trading API. The conditions are 'Excellent - Refurbished' (condition ID 2010), 'Very Good - Refurbished' (condition ID 2020), and 'Good - Refurbished' (condition ID 2030). Currently, these refurbished values can only be used in the Cell Phones & Smartphones category (category ID 9355) for the following marketplaces: US, Canada, UK, Germany and Australia. The 'Seller - Refurbished' condition (condition ID 2500) can no longer be used in the Cell Phones & Smartphones category.

To use any of these new refurbished item conditions in category 9355, sellers must go through an application and qualification process. Any seller who is not eligible to use these new refurbished item conditions in category 9355 will get blocked if they try to create/revise a listing with any of the new item conditions.

In the Trading API, the item condition is set by passing in the numeric ID for the item condition in the Item.ConditionID field. In addition to the Add/Revise/Relist/Verify calls supporting the new refurbished item conditions for the Cell Phones & Smartphones category, the GetCategoryFeatures call was updated to start returning the three new refurbished item condition values in the Category.SpecialFeatures container (instead of the Category.ConditionValues container) to indicate that sellers must be pre-qualified to use these item conditions.

Metadata API updated to better handle restricted item conditions

A new itemConditions.usage field was added to the getItemConditionPolicies method of the Metadata API to indicate when a specific item condition is restricted to eligible sellers.

'Certified - Refurbished' (condition ID 2000) is one item condition that is restricted to eligible sellers, and three other refurbished item conditions were recently added, but only supported in the Cell Phones & Smartphones category (category ID 9355) for eligible sellers. These refurbished values are 'Excellent - Refurbished' (condition ID 2010), 'Very Good - Refurbished' (condition ID 2020), and 'Good - Refurbished' (condition ID 2030).

Media API now supports video rejection reasons

There's a possibility that videos uploaded via the Media API can get blocked (for numerous reasons) before they are ever associated with a listing. The getVideo method was updated to return the reason(s) why a video was blocked through the new moderation.rejectReasons array.

Based on why the video is blocked, a seller can either edit the existing video or create a brand new video.

User-based subscriptions enabled for Notification API

User-based subscriptions were enabled for the Notification API. The first user-based notification is PLA_CAMPAIGN_BUDGET_STATUS. A seller using a Promoted Listing Advanced campaign will receive this notification whenever the daily budget for the campaign has been exceeded.

New Item Priority feed and new fields available in Buy Feed API

A new getItemPriorityFeed method allows you to download a file that contains all listings (that meet Buy Feed inclusive filters) within an eBay L1 category that have recently been added to or removed from a marketing campaign. This feed type can be very helpful to affiliates in the eBay Partner Network in deciding which listings they want to promote.

Before downloading an Item Priority feed, users should first download a daily feed for the same L1 eBay category using the getItemFeed method. To support the new Item Priority feeds, a new priorityListingPayload field has been added to item feed files to indicate which listings are associated with marketing campaigns.

In addition to the new Item Priority feed, numerous fields were also added to the getItemFeed and getItemSnapshot methods in Q3 releases. For a full list of the new data points, please see the Buy Feed API Release Notes.

Browse API updates

The following updates were made to the Browse API in Q3:

  • A new sort option was added to search and searchByImage methods to sort listings by the earliest end times.
  • To support the new Item Priority feeds, a new priorityListing field has been added to ssearch and searchByImage method responses to indicate listings which are associated with marketing campaigns.
  • A new AUTHENTICITY_GUARANTEE value was added as an option for the qualifiedPrograms filter. This filter is available for the search and searchByImage methods, and if a listing is enabled with Authenticity Guarantee, the AUTHENTICITY_GUARANTEE value will be returned under the qualifiedPrograms array. For more information about the qualifiedPrograms filter, including the proper syntax to use for the filter, see the Buy API Field Filters topic.

Deprecation and Decommission updates

The following APIs/methods have recently been announced as deprecated. Please see the Deprecation Status page for detailed information.

The following API call has recently been decommissioned:

  • The ReviseCheckoutStatus call of the Trading API was decommissioned on July 31, as scheduled. Developers can use the CompleteSale call to mark an order as paid or shipped.

We hope everyone had a great Q3 2021, and we are looking forward to working with the community throughout the rest of the year!