eBay Holiday Treasures: Curated Influencer Picks Highlight Unique Gift Ideas
eBay taps influencers for Holiday Treasures curated gift guide as part of Things. People. Love campaign.
Ads across Instagram and other social channels highlight some of the unique, vintage pre-loved items you can find for the enthusiast on your holiday list, saying "There's something for everyone. Whatever their thing is, find the things they love—all in one place."
At the risk of admitting too much about my age and social media preferences, I don't recognize any of the influencers involved - but to be fair, I'm likely not the demographic they're going for here.
Visiting the Holiday Treasures storefront takes a shopper directly to a Winter wonderland of brightly colored animations and gentle snow falling across the screen (can be turned on and off with the snowflake toggle in the lower right).
You can either just scroll and browse through an endless curated collection or click "all gift guides" to see bios of the "enthusiast" influencers and view each individual guide separately.
Clicking an item pops up a quote from the influencer who picked it, along with "See Similar", "See Details" and a "Buy It Now" button - assuming the item is still in stock.
That assumption is the first big problem I've found with Holiday Treasures - apparently eBay does not automatically remove out of stock or ended listings from the suggestions and about half of the items I clicked on either didn't show a Buy It Now button and/or if you clicked "see details" it would take you to an item page with a big banner saying that item had been ended by the seller.
That has also been a problem with eBay's Explore feature, indicating the company's award-winning AI is not able to recognize stock levels or active status of listings when deciding what it should recommend to users - not exactly the delightful buyer experience one would hope for.
Sellers were also initially concerned about the fact that eBay Explore did not show sellers IDs in the results, reducing the experience to a jumble of items that can be purchased on eBay and negating any branding efforts sellers may have made to try to stand out in highly competitive categories like fashion.
eBay tested removing seller IDs from regular search results earlier this year as well, but reversed course after significant seller pushback.
Liz Morton
Unfortunately, it appears eBay has not learned their lesson - not only does the pop up in the Holiday Treasures experience not show any seller details, but if you click on "see similar", both the original item and all of the suggestions just show "seller with x% feedback."
It's worth noting that all of the items I clicked "see similar" on only showed Sponsored items for suggestions - meaning all of these items are using Promoted Listings ads for which eBay may earn extra fees.
There's also no way to set preferences for location, so not only might the item not actually be in stock once you click through, it's possible it could be in stock but from another country when you might prefer not to shop internationally.
Again, that doesn't make for a great user experience, but it might make for some extra holiday treasure in eBay's bank account if any of those Sponsored items are using Promoted Listings Priority Cost Per Click ads.
This immersive influencer initiative is powered by eBay's recently launched Evo design system, which the company has said is explicitly aimed at attracting younger shoppers to the platform.
Liz Morton
It also builds on the Things. People. Love global marketing campaign eBay first launched with vintage clothing in August and has expanded to other enthusiast categories as we've moved into the holidays.
Liz Morton
Strangely, aside from social media posts pointing to the page, it does not appear eBay is doing much to draw attention to Holiday Treasures - there's no direct link or banners on the homepage in the desktop experience from what I can see, which seems like a wasted opportunity.
What do you think of eBay's Holiday Treasures influencer curated gift guide? Let us know in the comments below!
