• New technology allows brands to target precisely at scale without the need for cookies
• Real-time updates between ad calls eradicate waste from needless retargeting
• Launch follows successful pilot with Freeview, with eBay outperforming a leading DSP on both efficiency and engagement
London: eBay Advertising has announced the official launch of eBay Advanced Audience Technology (eAAT) in Europe, a new set of programmatic targeting capabilities developed in response to increasing demand for cookie-less targeting solutions and truly real-time audience data.
Powered by eBay shopper data – with rich insights into the 174 million global shoppers on the marketplace – the new proprietary server-to-server solution creates dynamic audience segments which are based on observed and intelligently predicted behaviours and are updated between ad calls in real-time.
This means that each user is assessed and segmented by their exact shopping behaviour at the precise moment the ad is called. Therefore, advertisers can be confident that everyone in that segment is in-market for their product or service, maximising effectiveness and eliminating wasted impressions targeting shoppers that are no longer relevant. It also ensures every ad served complements the on-site shopping experience, in line with eBay’s customer-first philosophy.
eBay Advertising currently offers over 300 dynamic audience segments across Europe, from mobile phone intenders to business owners. However, custom segments can be quickly created on demand, with eBay developing these transparently and in partnership with brands to ensure they deliver the best results.
Mike Klinkhammer, Director of Advertising Sales EU at eBay said: “We want brands to be able to target everyone who’s genuinely in the market for their product at any given time. Gone are the days of segmentation lags, match rate issues, third party cookie reliance and guesswork: with our proprietary eBay Advanced Audience Technology, we can confidently augment our data to create audience segments for almost every intention – from exercise enthusiasts to photography fans and specific brand affinities – and know they’re as scaled and up to date as they possibly can be. The second a user loses their intent – because they’ve bought a product or are simply more interested in something else – they’re removed from the segment, meaning they won’t be served an ad that’s not relevant to them. With marketers under peak pressure to demonstrate ROI in the current climate, this next generation of audience capabilities truly changes the game for advertisers looking for granular, transparent targeting at scale.”
Targeting is based on eBay user IDs, negating the need for cookies. And, by moving to a cookie-less targeting environment where no DMP matching is required, eBay has achieved a 3x increase in audience match rates across its 174m shoppers worldwide – driving greater scale and precision for its advertisers.
Klinkhammer added: “Third party cookies have certainly served a purpose, but the advertising industry is crying out for an alternative – and, so far, there’s a gap in the market. That’s why we rebuilt our infrastructure from the ground up, to maximise reach and future proof our offering to ultimately help drive better business outcomes for our clients.”
Today’s launch follows a successful pilot campaign with Freeview, the UK’s digital terrestrial television service, which, through their digital agency NMPi, leveraged eBay’s capabilities and scale to target shoppers actively in-market across relevant product categories to drive awareness and purchases of TVs installed with Freeview Play.
Using eAAT, eBay was able to match the programmatic deals offered by a leading DSP across a range of categories (including ‘Electronics’ and ‘TV’), supplemented with additional, hyper-targeted audiences at scale to further reduce wastage.
eAAT outperformed the leading DSP for Freeview’s twin objectives of low CPAs and high CTRs.
• For the broad ‘Electronics’ deal, eBay delivered a CPA 33% lower than the DSP (£94.41 vs £141.71).
• For the core ‘TV’ deal, the CPA using eAAT data was less than half that of the DSP (£26.89 vs £55.01).
• In terms of CTR, eBay outperformed the DSP across all like-for-like deals
• Overall, eBay outperformed the DSP for both CPA (£41.15 vs £61.40) and CTR (0.07% vs 0.04%).
James MacDonald, Senior Marketing Manager at Freeview added: “The ability to target not just highly relevant audiences at scale, but also benefit from truly real-time data so we know that they are genuinely in-market was of critical importance in Freeview’s decision to add eBay’s eAAT targeting to our media plan. The KPIs for this campaign were very much performance-led and eBay outperformed both our standard TV targeting and our go-to targeting from a major data provider. Based on the results we saw from this test we are keen to explore other eBay targeting solutions and we are looking to invest more budget into eAAT-driven activity.”
