EBay is joining the growing hordes of companies that are offering even more data to advertisers to help them better reach intended customers, in this instance companies that sell cars, trucks, motorcycles and R.V.'s and run digital ads on ebay.com.
The company is to announce on Thursday morning that it is introducing a digital-advertising product by the name of eBay Direct Connect, meant to help those companies reach the estimated 10 million active eBay shoppers - out of the total of 108 million - who are in the market for new vehicles. The goal is to stimulate sales at brick-and-mortar dealer showrooms as well as on ebay.com.
What is spurring the introduction is that many automakers are talking about shifting ad dollars to digital media from traditional media, or adding money to the digital portions of their ad budgets while maintaining their spending in traditional media. “Automotive advertising is getting increasingly di gital,†said Stephen Howard-Sarin, head of North American advertising at eBay in San Jose, Calif.
Adding additional data to digital advertising is like “two great tastes that taste great together,†he said, laughing as he invoked the vintage Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercials.
To produce eBay Direct Connect, eBay will for the first time obtain data about car and truck shoppers from R.L. Polk & Company and combine it with eBay's own aggregate data about how its users behave and shop. EBay and Polk have signed a multiyear agreement; terms are not being disclosed.
The combined data streams will enable marketers that sell cars, trucks, motorcycles and RV's - and advertisers in related categories like auto parts and accessories - to aim their ads on eBay and the eBay Motors section of the Web site much more precisely. EBay Motors has 14 million unique visitors each month, as estimated by comScore.
EBay Direct Connect will also provide marketers with more detailed measurements of how their digital ads on ebay.com and ebay.com/motors perform. “Part of what Direct Connect allows you to do is close the loop,†Mr. Howard-Sarin said, by answering the question, “Did people who saw my ad buy my car?â€
“We match up with what Polk knows,†he added, to make the ads “more personal, more targeted and, ideally, more relevant.â€
Mr. Howard-Sarin and Mitch Gross, senior manager for automotive display advertising at eBay, emphasized that the eBay data being used for Direct Connect was aggregated and complied with eBay's privacy policy and industry standards on consumer privacy protection.
Mr. Gross said there had been “great conversations†about eBay Direct Connect with marketers and agencies. To stimulate those discussions, eBay shared some results of combining data from Polk about owners of Ford F-150 trucks and “eBay shopping behavior across aggregate groups,†he added.
For instance, Mr. Gross said, the male owners of the trucks, ages 25 to 34, shopped on eBay for products like clothing and electronics, while men ages 35 to 44 shopped for products like home and garden items and sporting goods.
That suggests digital ads for F-150 trucks could be placed on pages in eBay categories like fashion; home, outdoors and décor; and sporting goods, along with pages in the eBay Motors category.
Ebay estimates that about $60 billion worth of goods are sold on ebay.com each year. In the third quarter, according to eBay, its sales of vehicles worldwide represented about $2 billion in gross merchandise volume, a term that online retailers use in place of revenue or sales.
Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on T witter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.
