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The Marketing API is part of the eBay Buy APIs. It retrieves eBay products based on a metric, such as Best Selling. This API helps shoppers compare products and motivate them to purchase items. You can use the other Buy APIs to create a buying application that lets users, eBay members or guests, buy from eBay sellers without visiting the eBay site. The Buy APIs provide the opportunity to purchase eBay items in your app or website.

Technical overview

This API uses the following resources:

  • merchandised_product - retrieves eBay products for a specific metric, such as Best Selling and returns 'also viewed' and 'also bought' products.

Business use cases

When used with the other Buy APIs, the Marketing API lets your shoppers browse by product and gives you the ability to expose products, giving you the ability to do the following:

  • Motivate customers to buy by showing them the best selling products.
  • Create awareness about different products/items, to help buyers compare and research products/items, and to select a product with confidence by showing the "also viewed" and "also bought" products.
  • Show collections of products or items based on product demand factors; reviews; context; or where the buyer is in the purchasing process.
  • Build landing page modules with these collections.

API restrictions

Please note the following constraints for the Marketing API.

Note: In addition to the Marketing API restrictions below, there are also requirements for using the Buy APIs. For more information, see Buy APIs Requirements.

Regional/site constraints

For a list of the supported eBay sites for all the Buy APIs, see Buy API Support by Marketplace.

To specify the site, set the X-EBAY-C-MARKETPLACE-ID request header to the site. For example:

X-EBAY-C-MARKETPLACE-ID = EBAY_GB

eBay policies and rules

Although the eBay Buy APIs are available for anyone to use in eBay's sandbox environment, use of the APIs in production is restricted. Users must meet standard eligibility requirements, get approvals from eBay support organizations, and sign contracts with eBay to access the Buy APIs in production.

Testing in sandbox

To test the getMerchandisedProducts method in Sandbox, you must use category ID 9355 and the response will be mock data.

Rate limits

The Marketing API limits the number of calls that can be made per day on behalf of your application. For the current application rate limits, see the eBay API Call Limits page.