eBay’s Ad Business Doing Well With New Strategy

eBay’s ad business is showing no signs of slowing down after reporting steady growth during last week’s earnings.

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In 2017, eBay announced a shift in its advertising strategy, from a reliance solely on third-party advertisements to a healthy mix of first-party and third-party ads from complementary brands.

According to eMarketer, 2019 marks the first year digital ad spending in the US will exceed traditional.

At the same time, marketers are beginning to shift ad dollars from search engines and social networks to eCommerce platforms, viewing online retailers as a promising new channel to reach relevant and attractive consumers with active purchasing intent.

What Are First-Party Ads?

First-party ads, including promoted listings, give sellers and brands another way to attract more buyers to their best items.

This non-cannibalistic form of advertising drives more traffic to specific listings or special events chosen by the seller or brand, while keeping the buyer on the eBay platform.

eBay’s promoted listings offering is unique in the industry in that it operates on a Cost Per Sale model – meaning the seller only pays for the ad when it results in a sale.

Promoted listings on eBay’s platform have been highly successful to date. Based on a recent analysis, promoted listings provide sellers an average boost in visibility of 36 percent.

eBay has over 800,000 sellers promoting over 200 million listings, which has led to year-over-year revenue growth of 110 percent.

And with eBay’s new promoted listings announcement, the company increased the eligibility for all sellers in good standing to now have the ability to access and take advantage of this valuable advertising offering.

Additionally, eBay unveiled new enhancements to the Seller Hub, enabling sellers to adopt and edit Promoted Listings more efficiently, resulting in more effective campaigns that further drive awareness and sales velocity.

A case study of how brands can also leverage promoted listings is eBay’s partnership with Reebok.

The company used eBay’s trending ad rate guidance to stay competitive and saw a 55 percent lift in overall sales and 142 percent lift in sales for their promoted items.

eBay believes that brands like Adidas, Dyson and KitchenAid choose to be on their platform because of the success advertisers realize with the program.

What About Third-Party Ads?

Third-party ads are more of a traditional form of digital advertising, where brands advertise their services on eBay.

These ads redirect the user away from eBay to the advertiser’s page and are particularly valuable to complementary brands – companies that offer services that cannot be sold on eBay (e.g. insurance companies, banks, etc.).

This offering gives complementary brands the opportunity to utilize eCommerce shopper insights to reach target audiences on eBay’s platform.

The Benefits Of Advertising On eBay

While digital ad spend is increasing, brands are facing greater competition for consumer attention and struggle to pinpoint the best advertising channels to reach their target audiences.

eBay’s ad platform is an invaluable resource to marketers. The company’s data is different from many large publishers because they are an eCommerce platform that captures buying intent signals, shopping insights and transaction-level data from 180 active buyers globally.

This highly-actionable data enables brands to optimize their ad campaigns to reach a more targeted audience.

eBay believes it is one of the few companies in the space that is well-positioned to be a strong partner to brands.

Operating as a pure marketplace that connects buyers and sellers with no inventory of our own, eBay has a unique opportunity to help brands reach their target shoppers at every stage of their journey, on any channel and at any time.

With eBay, brands can diversify sales by creating a new channel, go beyond sales attribution metrics, and form an open partnership to uncover new opportunities.

What do you think about eBay’s advertising strategy? Please use the comments section below or head over to our Facebook Group for Small Business Sellers and interact with other small business owners.

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Note: Story is derived from blog post by Bridget Davies, VP of Revenue and Seller Growth at eBay

Connect with us: Head over to our Facebook Group for Small Business Sellers and interact with other small business owners.

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