More third-party advertising coming to eBay

July 29, 2008

Sponsored links on eBay UK

If you think there’s too much third-party advertising on eBay now, just wait: things are only going to get worse. New Media Age reports that eBay have launched “an international business division” to sell targetted campaigns across eBay’s collection of international sites. Christian Kunz, head of advertising international at eBay, said that eBay’s “unrivalled product transaction data [would enable] brands to get closer to sales by directly targeting consumers with a high propensity to buy.” The new division will be based in London.

We know that eBay have been running user testing recently and looking at users’ reactions to advertising. One member of staff involved in the testing commented “normal users have a very low threshold to adverts or things that they suspect to be paid-for services”.

Nevertheless in the Q2 earnings call just a couple of weeks ago, JD hinted that more adverts towards the top of eBay pages might be coming:

We continually test that to make sure what placements optimize our advertising but by and large, above-the-fold listings monetize better.

During the eBay Live Town Hall, Stephanie Tilenius admitted that current third-party ads are taking sales off the eBay site. She also commented that the longer-term goal is for sellers to be able to buy advertising themselves on eBay: personally, I thought that’s what I was already doing.

I suspect I don’t need to say this ;-) but leave us a comment. Buyers’ comments are particularly welcome: have you clicked an ad on eBay and gone off-site to buy? Are third-party ads a help in finding what you want, or just a distraction to take you away from eBay?

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under News | 17 Comments