eBay Q3 2024 Pre-Earnings Commentary & Highlights
eBay is set to report Q3 2024 earnings October 30 at 5:30 PM Eastern. Take a look back at highlights from Q3 and what's happening so far in Q4 2024!
Leadership Changes & Corporate News
eBay has finally named a permanent Chief Legal Officer to replace Marie Oh Huber with Samantha Wellington joining the company on October 7.
They've also named a new Chief Communications Officer, welcoming Gigi Ganatra Duff to the company in September.
Previous US General Manager Adam Ireland is now leading eBay's trading card and collectibles business as VP Global Collectibles Gene Cook departed in July.
Liz Morton
eBay has appointed CarMax CEO, Bill Nash, to Board of Directors, hoping his "deep understanding of retail and e-commerce" and "extensive knowledge of building customer loyalty and trust" can help turn business strategy to growth.
The Business Development team is going to need all the help they can get after losing key talent, raising questions about approach to emerging market opportunities.
Liz Morton
Global VP General Manager Business Selling Murray Lambell has left eBay after almost 17 years at the company, moving on to British meal kit retailer, Gousto.
The EPA's lawsuit seeking to hold eBay liable for pesticides, chemicals, and illegal emissions control cheat devices sold on the platform has been dismissed on Section 230 grounds.
Liz Morton
Ex-eBay Senior Manager Special Operations, Brian Gilbert, became the final criminal defendant to be sentenced for his role in the 2019 cyberstalking scandal in July.
The civil lawsuit regarding the incident continues, with the victims, Ina and David Steiner of EcommerceBytes, seeking a potential 9 figure judgement or settlement.
Liz Morton
eBay continues to face labor relations troubles as TCGUnion-CWA workers rally for better wages and a fair contract and TCGPlayer sellers continue urging the FTC to investigate eBay's 2022 acquisition of the company.
Liz Morton
VP Global Customer Experience Derek Allgood is making the podcast rounds touting eBay's "phenomenal" customer experience, raising questions about AI, automation and employee morale.
Liz Morton
Meanwhile, we're still waiting for results of the investor recommended corporate Values Assessment eBay launched in July to determine if they are living up to the promises of their Human Rights Policies.
Promoted Listings Ads
Promoted Display Cost Per Click Ads are now appearing in more places, stirring renewed seller complaints about competitor ads directing buyers way from their listings.
Liz Morton
eBay is making changes to how seller budgets for Promoted Listings Priority Cost Per Click campaigns work, promising more flexibility and matching ad spend to demand, but will sellers still maintain control over maximum ad costs?
Liz Morton
AI Initiatives, Focus Verticals Strategy
eBay has added a new platform to their social media sharing tool, empowering sellers to share item videos directly to YouTube to draw more traffic to the site.
After winning "Best Generative AI Solution" Award in July, eBay launched AI-powered bulk listing for trading cards.
Liz Morton
Is CEO Jamie Iannone hoping investors won't notice the abracadabra switcheroo of promoting this very basic and limited feature while not talking about the Magical Listing Tool promised over a year ago that would allow all sellers to take a picture and have AI do the rest in any category, which still hasn't been seen in the wild?
eBay's AI-powered fashion recommendation tool is getting a few upgrades, most notably a thumbs down feature that allows users to provide instant feedback to eBay about the relevance and quality of the results being displayed.
Liz Morton
A "new" search redesign was introduced in August, with eBay saying it will "elevate shopper experience" with seamless, intuitive features, but savvy users struggle to find anything actually new or innovative in this update.
eBay is considering drastic changes to returns in the Motors Parts & Accessories categories that would allow buyers free returns for any reason, with sellers picking up the tab either directly or through increased Final Value Fees.
And despite Iannone's insistence that eBay isn't worried about competition from Temu, eBay continues tapping into China's vast auto parts manufacturing base for cross border growth.
Liz Morton
But focus vertical efforts in the Sneakers category seem to have stalled, leaving room for Walmart and StockX to steal eBay's thunder with an unusual partnership, spearheaded by to ex-eBayers.
That's not the only place where Walmart is stepping up the pressure - they've also recently launched Walmart Resold, clearly aimed at taking market share in crucial pre-owned categories and their presence at New York Comic Con highlighted not only their growing interest in Collectibles but a very interesting talent acquisition strategy too.
Liz Morton
On the trading card front, eBay has tapped PSA to be the sole provider of authentication services for both raw and graded trading cards sold through Authenticity Guarantee program and signed an exclusive sports memorabilia content deal with New York Times owned The Athletic.
Liz Morton
After losing a major trading card seller to Fanatics Collect in July, eBay is also facing increasing competition in the live selling space with Whatnot hitting $2 Billion in GMV for 2024 and Fanatics acquiring European live shopping platform Voggt with plans to expand into the UK in 2025.
eBay finally appears to be getting serious about ramping up eBay Live sales with aggressive GMV targets set for Collectibles category, but is it too little, too late?
Liz Morton
eBay Live has also expanded to include pre-loved clothing and is looking to find ways to lure experienced livestream sellers to the platform with incentives to increase streaming hours.
Unsurprisingly, pre-loved fashion is another category where eBay is facing stiff competition, highlighting how smaller niche marketplaces have taken a bite out of the consumer to consumer market that eBay once dominated.
Competitors like Depop, Mercari, and Poshmark have all shaken up their fee structures this year with some splitting fees between buyers and sellers and others shifting the burden entirely to buyers.
eBay has followed along in the UK, first introducing fee-free private sales for clothing in April and then expanding to all categories except Motors in September.
Liz Morton
The move angered many business sellers, who felt betrayed by eBay not addressing the issue at eBay Open UK and questioned whether it would hurt their reselling businesses to have an influx of private sellers competing against them with the unfair advantage of paying no selling fees.
In a likely not coincidentally timed maneuver, Vinted Pro was launched in the UK the next day, providing a new venue for professional business sellers to list their items - with no selling fees attached!
The backlash and shrewd competitor response sent eBay scrambling, and they have since quietly thrown a bone to some business sellers too by offering a fee-free promotion for used clothing sales, good through the end of the year.
Liz Morton
The willingness to give up fee revenue in order to boost GMV and Active Buyers is an interesting strategy - particularly since Iannone had been highly critical of previous CEO Devin Wenig's strategy that offered quarterly sitewide flash discounts (paid by eBay) to try to attract more buyers in 2018-2019.
As part of the fee-free private selling scheme, eBay also introduced new payout terms with eBay Balance getting rid of daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly automated payouts to keep funds on account to be used for buying and selling costs (and of course earning interest for eBay in the meantime) instead.
But sellers say the new manual payout process is needlessly difficult and confusing, and unsurprisingly has also encountered technical issues blocking withdrawal of funds to a bank account.
While eBay trumpeted the "good news" of no selling fees with a massive media blast, they took the time honored route of burying the "bad news" in a 10-K filing - revealing they plan to introduce buyer fees in the UK in early 2025.
Liz Morton
No details have been released yet, but Iannone promised the new fees would come along with new "value-added services", prompting some to wonder if eBay may be considering a subscription model like Amazon Prime or the rumored Trusted Buyer program that would give some buyers special perks like advance refunds and free returns.
But eBay could be jumping onto the buyer fee bandwagon too late, as competitors who led the way are now starting to admit it hasn't worked out and, in some cases, are reversing course completely.
Since making the change to shift fees to buyers, Mercari has laid off ~45% of their US staff (with CEO John Lagerling admitting the change had not resulted in the GMV growth they had hoped) and they have continued to struggle with buyer aversion to paying fees directly and a major cart abandonment problem.
6 months later, Mercari is testing adding the buyer fee back into the item price to show one total amount up front with shipping and tax calculated at checkout - just like it used to be when sellers paid the fees.
Liz Morton
Poshmark speed ran their version of the buyer fee experiment, which split the fees between both buyers and sellers, receiving so much pushback from both sides of the marketplace that they reverting back to the old fee structure less than 3 weeks later with CEO Manish Chandra admitting it had negatively impacted sales and apologizing to sellers for the disruption.
Liz Morton
Will eBay learn anything from their competitors' failures and tweak how they plan to implement buyers fees in the UK or possibly abandoned the idea all together before it rolls out?
That's it for the eBay Q3 2024 pre-earnings highlights - catch up on commentary from Q2 earnings and stay tuned for more Q3 coverage after the call from Value Added Resource!
