EBay Readies New Advertising System
ust in case you aren’t already spending too much time or money on eBay, the auction giant is extending its reach even further around the Web with a new context-sensitive advertising system designed to bring you back to the fold if you stray too far.Michael van Swaaij, eBay’s chief strategy officer, announced on Saturday at the eBay Developers Conference in Las Vegas that the company will soon release eBay AdContext, a system of ads that will run on other sites and direct visitors to eBay auctions.
A military history site, for instance, might have keywords that generate eBay ads linking to an auction of military memorabilia.
As with other contextual ad systems, the ads are generated by a few lines of code added to those sites’ Web pages. When new auctions appear for the same keyword — for example, a different auction of military memorabilia — the ad will automatically update to point to the new eBay auction.
Becoming a Portal?
The ad system, similar to Google’s and Yahoo’s, will split revenue with the Web affiliate sites. A portion of the resulting auction sales will go to those sites, depending on volume.
Matt Del Percio, a Yankee Group analyst, said AdContext is another sign of eBay’s intent to diversify. “Being just a one-armed shopping center isn’t going to cut it,” he said. “EBay’s looking to become more of a portal, offering consumers more access channels.”
But not all observers think eBay would be wise to diversify.
Adam Sarner, an analyst for Gartner, said the new service might indeed accentuate eBay’s value, but he questioned whether it is a good move for the company to start getting away from its core competencies, linking to other things and doing other services. “What does eBay become?” he asked.
Google, Skype
This latest move comes in the midst of a changing landscape for eBay, which is currently one of the largest customers for Google’s AdWords. It is difficult to do a search on Google without seeing an advertisement appear for an eBay-related auction on the right side of the search-results page.
In addition, there are reports that Google will soon offer an online payment system, which would be a competitor to eBay’s popular online payment system, PayPal.
On Tuesday, eBay is expected to announce tie-ins between its auction service and Skype, the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service it purchased last year.
Reportedly, eBay will allow sellers to embed links in their eBay pages, enabling “click to call” features so that sellers and potential buyers can directly connect through voice, text messaging, or video conference calls.
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