9:46 am, June 14, 2018
EBAY ADVERTISING has soft-launched a new product designed to allow businesses, such as car dealerships, to reach a wider audience in their local area.
The product, which is called ‘eBay Local Services Ads’, is being initially piloted in the UK, with Germany also trialling the system this month.
Local Services Ads allows businesses to advertise themselves to relevant eBay users in their area by taking advantage of the online auction site’s data and insights on its users.
eBay users are shown advertisements for businesses that are local to them and offer the type of product the customer is searching for on the site.
For example, if a consumer searches for a car, they will be shown an advert for a nearby car dealership that fits with the description of what they are looking for.
Businesses can sign up to the service online and choose whether to upload their own personalised advertisements or use a standard eBay format. They can choose the audience they want to target and segment that audience by product category, searched keywords, location and demographic.
Bert Bassett, EU director at eBay, who has headed up the project, commented: ‘eBay wants to become a marketplace for services as well as products – and we think that this is a great place to start.
‘Our Local Services Ads will particularly help small service-based businesses to use our inventory to target local, relevant customers.
‘Crucially, we’re helping them reach users when they’re already in a buying mood, and when we know they’re in the market for a particular service, to deliver maximum return on investment.’
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