Scot Wingo

The eBay Ad Campaign Has Begun: Will It Help?

Hey Patricia,

Positives:
* They look to be spending big $$$ this holiday vs. $0 last year
* They are talking about the variety of product at eBay and saving $ - saving $ will be big this holiday.

Neutral
* I've played the ads for 20 folks - they play well with men, but women don't care for them.

Negatives:
* The 'come to think of it' thing bothers me still.
* They could have punched harder on some things like trust and selection and value IMO.
* women don't care for these ads and I believe they drive 60%+ of household $$

So net net, I am slightly positive that they will help sellers this holiday as I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

Scot

Suggestions for eBay 2.0

Thanks for all the comments everyone. I'm keeping a record of the Q+A from here and other venues and will post a follow-up shortly.

e-Commerce Set to Soar in 2008

Steve,

Remember this is a survey of about 50 retailers so there is potential for some data to be skewed all over the place. For example at ChannelAdvisor we have clients that do as good or better than the eBay/Amazon ETR with paid-search AND CSE. It's not the norm/average, but it's doable.

In many ways ETR is a self fulfilling prophecy and your strategy will vary (do you buy head or long tail terms or both?) based on what you want your ETR to be.

Hope this helps,
Scot

e-Commerce Set to Soar in 2008

Hi Marty,

Thanks for the kudos. You are right, the 17% growth rate can be deceiving to some degree and you definitely have to 'peel the onion' and look at the underlying categories. When you do this with the data provided in this report you see that the top 5 categories drove about 50% of ecommerce.

Also you notice that some categories such as pet supplies, appliances, sporting goods and jewelry are going to grow slower than the 'big 5'. Pulling this back to the real world, if you are an internet retailer or looking to buy ecommerce stocks, the category is very important and should be carefully considered.

Scot

A Solution for eBay and Its Frustrated Seller Community

Hey Paul,

Scot Wingo from ChannelAdvisor here. We never offered any lifetime guarantee of any pricing and als it's a mis characterization to say we are increasing prices.

In fact we are end-of-lifing our Pro product and offering people the ability to move to another product, MarketplaceAdvisor Standard that yes does cost more, BUT it is a different product and has vastly more and advanced features. eBay raises prices and delivers less (buyers) which is a cat of a different color.

Scot