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Mobile Ebay

“Big FMCG” brands in talks with eBay as it has a second bash at mobile advertising

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By Jennifer Faull, Deputy Editor

September 12, 2014 | 2 min read

Ebay is set to roll out a mobile ad offering – and is in talks with a number of brands including “big FMCG companies” as it takes a curated approach to filling the limited ad space.

“We’re going about this in a more curated way than we have with previous product launches,” Phuong Nguyen, director of eBay’s ad business in the UK, told The Drum.

“We want to make sure we get the kind of brand partners working with us that we know customers want to see.”

This is the second time eBay has ventured into mobile advertising. In 2012 it briefly ran banner ads on the app before being swiftly pulled after the company’s president said they were not worth the time or the effort.

“We thoroughly agreed with him at the time,” said Nguyen, explaining that at the time the industry was failing to do anything that was engaging, inspiring or complimentary to the user experience.

“The journey has been almost challenging ourselves, and the industry, to find that right balance between a great user experience from a shopping app perspective, and a great user experience from an advertising perspective.”

The conclusion eBay came to for its second entry into the space was to eschew banner ads completely and introduce a native format that is integrated on the home-screen.

The option to serve the ads programmatically has not been ruled out, with Nguyen explaining that eBay is currently in “phase zero” and it will look at how to build capabilities and other advertising products

“As we go through that process and given the strength we have in the programmatic area where more than two thirds of our display advertising revenue is generated programmatically then no doubt we’ll be looking at the role programmatic plays in connecting advertising products on our mobile devices,” he added.

The ad format will run on iOS, Android apps in the UK, North America and Germany as well as the desktop site.

Mobile Ebay

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