Like Amazon, Facebook and Google, eBay is sitting on a huge trove of proprietary customer data.
Unlike those other online giants, eBay had not made that data available for ad targeting by marketers. Until now. AdWeek
reports eBay is following Amazon’s lead in monetizing customer data.
“We’re now commercializing that capability for the benefit of other marketers who want to reach shoppers,” eBay’s head of digital display in North America, Stephen Howard-Sarin, told attendees at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference this week.
Advertisers will be able to target ads to segments of eBay customers. In a humorous slip of an example, AdWeek quotes Howard-Sarin saying, that while customers expect eBay not to reveal personal information, “that doesn’t mean we can’t create segments of shoe shoppers and let someone like Zappos—or actually not Zappos [which is owned by Amazon]—to target against those shoe buyers.”
To retarget to eBay customers, marketers will need to buy ads through eBay. “My team does the buying on behalf of eBay as well as on behalf of all third-party marketers. We don’t bid against each other,” Howard-Sarin said.
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