eBay will begin adding Half.com listings to eBay search results. eBay had acquired Half in 2000 and had planned to integrate Half.com into eBay. In 2004, it reversed its decision to close the Half.com site and has begun including links to Half in media categories on eBay. Beginning in early 2007, eBay will add all Half.com listings to eBay search results.
eBay is also wrapping up production of new television commercials to promote the core eBay site. Those ads will start running in November. They will contain a very similar message to last year's ads, and will run with the same frequency.
eBay Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Gary Briggs announced the new campaign and Half.com changes during the eBay Town Hall event on Friday presided over by President of eBay North America Bill Cobb. The theme of the event was "Attracting Buyers To eBay." Briggs announced various marketing initiatives eBay has been conducting, and eBay executives answered questions submitted by members.
Briggs discussed a number of catalogs that were being sent out to top eBay buyers during the holiday shopping season, including catalogs targeted to fashion, technology and business buyers, as well as some general catalogs and one designed for holiday-shopping procrastinators. Briggs discussed marketing initiatives around eBay Express and eBay Motors, and mentioned an eBay Motors project called "El Camino" that is "similar to local classifieds but with an eBay flavor."
There were several questions from members about whether eBay's running of paid-search ads from Yahoo on eBay search results would take buyers off of eBay. Bill Cobb said, "We've studied cannibalization, it's a small test, but we haven't seen cannibalization." He also said that in addition to testing Yahoo ads on null search results, eBay was also testing the approach in some other places at a very low level.
Cobb said, "Part of our job is to try and get people to continue to return, we want to provide a rich experience so people can find the goods they're looking for. Revenue from Yahoo is a small fraction of what we get from transaction revenue, but it's important to satisfy buyers' requests."
Editor's Note: Bill Cobb also addressed the issue of bugs in the Sell Your Item form during the Town Hall meeting, see the AuctionBytes blog for more information (http://digbig.com/4ndem).
