Gen-Z, Millennial Opps: eBay shifts strategy under new CMO (Score 51)

Sales Lead: eBay has started pivoting its marketing strategy to support shopping experiences.

• The company will also bolster cause marketing efforts through partnerships with organizations such as Engage for Good.
• EBay will continue investing in product and full-funnel marketing efforts.
• In a recent earnings call, the company's leadership attributed recent robust growth to its advertising, which leads me to believe spend will continue increasing (more below).
• The company will likely:
  • Continue shifting strategy under its new CMO (more below)
  • Keep increasing spend
  • Conduct agency reviews
• Target demographic: 
  • Gen-Z and millennials

Recent leadership shifts:

• ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​This shift comes not long after eBay named Adrian Fung as its global CMO late last year.
  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Fung joined the company in July 2021 as its customer and performance marketing VP.

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: EBay hasn't utilized national TV since 2021 when it allocated around $4.1m in 2021.
  • 2021 ad programming: Its 2021 commercials targeted male sports enthusiasts watching shows such as the 2020 NBA All-Star Game, SportsCenter, the 2021 NCAA Basketball Tournament, SportsCenter With Scott Van Pelt, and the 26th Annual Critics' Choice Awards.
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: Since the beginning of 2023, the online marketplace has spent approximately $71.9m on digital ads, 8% more than the approximately $66.8m spent within the same 2022 timeframe.
  • YTD data: YTD, eBay has earned about 8.1b digital impressions via desktop display (58%), Instagram (21%), Facebook (7%), YouTube (6%), desktop video (5%), and mobile display (3%) ads.
    • ​​​​​​​The company has placed most of this year's desktop display ads site direct (95%) onto destinations such as centurylink.net (43%), windstream.net, wowway.net, armstrongmywire.com, and tds.net.
  • Last year: EBay spent roughly $136k on this channel last year, almost double the roughly $69.4m spent in 2021.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The company utilizes Google Ads and experiential activations along with digital, local broadcast, radio, print (magazines), Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (though barely), and online video (primarily via Youtube.com) ads.
  • EBay sponsors podcasts such as Dateline NBC, The Herd with Colin Cowherd, The Economist Podcasts, Stuff You Missed in History Class, and the Last Podcast On The Left.
  • The company also invests in short-form DRTV ads.
    • ​​​​​​​It has incredibly highly concentrated network TV coverage and will not likely launch a new campaign soon.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: If you haven't yet done so, reach out soon since agency reviews could still follow last year's CMO appointment.
• Current agency roster:
  • Joan​​​​​​​: Creative AOR
  • EssenceMediaCom: Media and digital AOR
  • We Are Social: Digital and social agency partner
  • MediaMonks: Experiential agency partner

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser; DRTV insights by Media Analytics.