EBay Launches Dedicated International Ad Division

EBay has announced the launch of an International Ad Division, designed to allow advertisers and agencies to buy multinational and cross-territorial campaigns across eBay sites.

A central international sales team will be based in London, headed up by Philip Rinn, who will vacate his position as business development director for eBay-owned Shopping.com. A supporting team managing back-end ad operations and analytics will be based in Bern, Switzerland.

“Working with advertisers in local markets, we came across an increasing demand for international campaigns, and campaigns across multiple territories,” Christian Kunz, head of advertising international at eBay, told ClickZ News. “This service will offer a flexible and scalable solution for international advertisers and agencies,” he added.

Instead of dealing with sales teams in local markets, a central resource at ebayadvertising.com will serve multinational campaigns, granting access to eBay’s estimated global audience of 80 million users.

Ad formats will comprise IAB compliant banners and ads promoting multiple products already live across eBay sites. Advertisers can target users through demographic, contextual, or behavioral means, making use of consumer data such as previous searches and purchases.

EBay revised its privacy policy last week to include the use of such data for ad-targeting, but will enable users to opt-out.

Kunz anticipates a large demand for the service, and stated that eBay was currently in discussions with a number of “big global brands.” Previous advertisers have included auto advertisers such as Mercedes-Benz and Fiat.

He pointed to the pre-segmented user groups and communities created by eBay’s category structure as a major selling point, stating, “Our offering is attractive to a wide variety of advertisers. They can reach broad audiences by advertising on the homepage or top level categories, but can also reach smaller, highly engaged niche audiences by digging deeper into the categories.”

“People come to eBay to shop, so it’s a great opportunity for advertisers to reach people with a high propensity to buy,” he added.

Kunz did not specify how many staff would make up the sales team, stating simply that the division will grow with demand. Alongside standard display deals, sales staff will also sell strategic partnerships and campaigns across all eBay sites.