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 

Rajiv Dutta leaves eBay

July 17, 2008

eBay today announced that Rajiv Dutta is stepping down as President of eBay Marketplaces from October. During his ten year stay at eBay, Rajiv has held a number of posts including Chief Financial Officer, President of Skype and President of PayPal.

Praising Rajiv as an “extraordinary leader”, eBay President and CEO John Donahoe said “he will always be part of the eBay Community”. For my own part, in all my years of eBay-watching, I’ve never seen anyone with the combination of imagination, drive and extraordinary niceness that Rajiv exudes: he’ll be missed.

He will be replaced as head of Marketplaces by Lorrie Norrington, who most recently was President of eBay Marketplaces Operations. Some of Lorrie’s responsibilities will devolve upon Stephanie Tilenius, General Manager of eBay North America.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under News | 5 Comments 

Live day three: Lorrie rocks

June 22, 2008

Town HallAnd then suddenly, it was all over. The jugglers juggled chainsaws dressed in purple velvet tights, Chris Isaak was really quite ridiculously sexy, thank you, and goodnight. They played Freebird as we left: I’m leaving here tomorrow, but Lord knows, things have changed.

Earlier in the day I went to the Q&A session with eBay’s executives for PowerSellers, effectively an extension of the Town Hall. This open access to eBay’s top management has always been one of the best aspects of Live, but something about it has changed. Finally, I believe eBay when they say they’re listening. This isn’t just about “we give you forums to complain about us and wheel out Pierre once a year to press the flesh” anymore. What I saw yesterday were eight people who, I believe, really want to make eBay a better place for all of us.

One of the questions asked by a PowerSeller and cheered by the room was this: why, when sellers tell eBay that they have things wrong, is the response inevitably ‘we know better’? Griff began the response with the eBay line that buyers were leaving the site in droves, and something had to be done to stop the exodus. While this is undoubtedly true, it’s something all sellers have heard before, and when it’s your own living on the line, it’s hard to accept. Someone needs to find a new response. And then they did.

With a passion and frankness that’s a million miles from the slick polish we’ve seen from old-school execs, Lorrie Norrington talked about how it feels to read blog posts every day that rip your company to shreds, a company where, as she put it, “people are working their backsides off to make you successful”. Indicating her fellow panel members, she went on, “there are a lot of new faces up here. We’re sorry for the mistakes of the past, come join us for the future”.

Then Stephanie joined in: we’re a new team, allow us to prove to you that things have changed. “We will prove to you that it’s a new day at eBay.” And that’s what’s different: let us prove it. Things have changed at eBay Towers. This is a brand new management team, and I believe they will make good on their promises.

I know that there will be people reading this post who don’t want to hear this message. That’s fine, but ask yourself why you continue to do business with a company you say you don’t like, don’t trust, don’t believe in? Why, in fact, put so much effort into writing blog entries and forum posts and emails expressing your hatred of eBay? Wouldn’t it be better to put that energy into making things work, on- or off-eBay?

I’ve talked a lot this week about how the fanaticism has gone. It makes for less exciting photographs, but I don’t miss it at all. It wasn’t real; you can’t build real businesses on pins and silly hats (pin and silly hat sellers excepted). Lorrie Norrington and Stephanie Tilenius and the rest of eBay’s management are making something new, something that has a future, something that I for one am intensely proud to be associated with.

As the guy in yesterday’s Town Hall put it, “by the way, Lorrie rocks”.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Events, Featured | 45 Comments 

Live Town Hall: it’s all about the feedback

June 21, 2008

“I’m going to ask a question again that I asked yesterday,” said Larry Phillips from the IMA, which really set the tone for most of today’s Town Hall: there was really very little said that we haven’t heard before, though the feel of the meeting was positive and civilised, and the eBay execs responded enthusiastically to a number of suggestions from members.

Griff commented that of the seven Live events he’s attended, this is the one in which he’s learned the most: attendees are generally very well informed about eBay and full of constructive criticism on how eBay and their own businesses can move forward together. It was suggested that eBay find a way for bricks and mortar stores to offer the facility for their in-person customers to bid on their eBay listings without falling foul of the shill-bidding rules; this received a positive response, as did a request to give Giving Works greater prominance on the site.

There were two questions relating to the wording buyers see for feedback and DSRs: Larry’s first question asked why “4″ scores in DSRs are labelled “good” and “acceptable” when in reality, they’re fail. Brian Burke said that wording on the feedback overview page which states that neutral feedback doesn’t impact a seller’s feedback score should be added to, to reflect the fact that it does now affect the feedback percentage.

There is a definite plan to introduce more granularity into DSR results so that sellers can see exactly where they have been marked down. Brian Burke said that anonymous DSRs had been introduced to counter the possibility of retaliatory feedback, but now that retaliatory feedback is no longer possible, eBay will revisit the question.

A detailed question was asked about the new links policy: may sellers “promote” off-eBay stores without linking to them? Can links still be included in classified ads? And aren’t eBay’s own Yahoo ads contradictory of the new policy? Brian Burke stated that the policy had been announced prematurely, and details were still to be worked out. This is certainly true: I called by the Trust & Safety stand yesterday to ask whether linking to an eBay blog or cross-promoting your own IDs would be permitted. Three Pinks told me they didn’t know, and though the fourth told me that both were permitted, I got the distinct impression that was his personal opinion rather than actual policy.

Responding to the point about Yahoo ads, Stephanie Tilenius said that the long-term goal is that sellers would buy advertising on the site, but she admitted that the current advertising is taking sales off the site: this is a welcome change from previous statements from eBay which have bizarrely tried to claim that ads don’t cost sellers sales.

eBay do seem to be recognising that their sellers are business people and making changes accordingly: a possible future development is a facility to control administrative rights for businesses with multiple IDs. There’s also a hint that merchant credit card accounts could be integrated into eBay Checkout. And PayPal’s Monroe Labouisse stated definitively that PayPal-only will not be introduced in the US.

Ina liveblogged the event if you want more detail.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Events, Featured | 19 Comments 

Rising DSRs boost eBay share price

April 7, 2008

This post was written in April 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

On Thursday last week Merrill Lynch issued an upgrade from neutral to buy on eBay stocks which has already lead to a bump in eBay’s stock price. What interested me more though was the reasons for the change of heart.

Merrill Lynch spoke to eBay users and concluded that some sellers are migrating from auctions to fixed price listings, tweaking postage prices to up DSR scores and generally being more responsive to buyers.

Also a comment by Stephanie Tilenius at last week’s Catalyst conference, that eBay had seen a 20-30 basis points improvement to DSRs since seller incentives were introduced (a basis point is a 1/100th) lends further credence to Merrill Lynch’s upgrade. It suggests that sellers are working to improve the service they give and that’s what eBay were aiming for.

Whilst these changes may appear small (I can’t remember ever getting excited about a 0.2 - 0.3 improvement in the past!), they’re significant enough to push the share price to its highest peak so far this year.

There is a change of direction coming from eBay since the management changes. The old management team were firmly focused on auctions whilst JD appears to be embracing fixed price listings. Seller performance being tied to seller incentives looks to be improving generally great customer service on eBay to even higher levels.

If these steps result in eBay’s share price increasing it’s a winning situation for buyers, sellers, investors and eBay themselves. The big question is what other changes will please investors and are their interests aligned with those of buyers and sellers?

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured | Comments Off