[unclebucknasty]

Worse, it seemed that the more esoteric the search term, the more likely it was to show up in one of those goofy ads. I'm not sure if that's actually the case, or if I was just more likely to notice because the dearth of organic results prompted me to pay more attention to the ads.

But, in any case, it was definitely noticeable that they were "spamming" AdWords with worthless ads that frequently led to nowhere useful on eBay's site.

[mh-]

that is the case - because there is ~no one else bidding for those keywords, they are more likely to fall under their (usually very low, relative to competition) maximum bid.