Overstock has committed 60 percent of its offline advertising to featuring its auction marketplace to help reach its goal of 2 million registrants by January 1, 2006.

The new radio and cable-television ads started airing on February 21. The television ad features the Overstock spokesperson, who says the company is "taking on the big boys." The ad mentions eBay and Amazon. The TV ad is targeted toward attracting auction sellers, while Overstock's new radio ads are focused on driving buyers to the auction site. The television commercial can be seen on the Overstock site at http://digbig.com/4csqt titled "Win $50,000."

In addition, Overstock will run a text ad in the Shopping box on the MSN homepage on March 2 advertising auction items that have free shipping. Sellers who put the words "free shipping" in their listing titles or subtitles will get extra exposure that day.

On Friday, Overstock Auctions Vice President Holly MacDonald-Korth said there are 106,756 auction listings on the site, but cannot reveal statistics on sell-through rates because it is a public company.

A note from Overstock Chairman and President Patrick Byrne and the Overstock Auctions Executive Team was emailed to Overstock Auctions users on Friday, urging them to spread the word about the auction site. "Each of you knows thousands of eBay buyers. Now is the time to contact them and tell them to try Overstock.com Auctions,... if there were ever a time to strike, now is that time."

Overstock launched its Auction marketplace in September and has been agressively wooing eBay sellers since.

http://auctions.overstock.com