finally accessed the earnings call transcript. These are some quotes I found interesting. I suggest reading the entire thing for more context :
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ebay-inc-nasdaq-ebay-q1-194548042.html
CEO: "And I am pleased that we remain on track for GMV growth to turn positive by Q3 or Q4 of this year." (Me: So, maybe not until Q4. They've given themselves some wiggle room.)
Overall, focus category GMV grew nearly 5% last quarter, outpacing the remainder of our marketplace by roughly 6 points.
(Me: Of course, their marketing spend is devoted to focus categories, not the remainder of the marketplace, so it would be a huge surprise if focus category GMV did NOT outpace the remainder.)
While eBay Live remains in beta, we are extremely excited about continuing to scale this experience throughout the year.
(Me: Which could mean just about anything)
Our Ads business continues to deliver healthy growth at scale while improving velocity and price realization for our sellers at compelling return on ad spend levels. During Q1, first-party advertising grew 28%, while total ad revenue represented 2.1% of GMV. During the quarter, over 3 million sellers adopted a single ad product and we ended the quarter with over $950 million live promoted listings. Our standard cost per acquisition units remain the largest contributor to year-over-year ad revenue growth in Q1, followed by our cost per click advanced product.
We reached a major milestone in Q1 as pre-owned and refurbished goods reached 40% of total GMV on our marketplace after consistently outpacing the sales of brand new goods since the pandemic.
We expanded our go-to-market efforts for offsite ads toward the end of last year and this product emerged as a material contributor to first-party ad revenue growth in Q1. We have ambitious roadmap to further optimize these ad units and increase seller adoption throughout 2024.
Last quarter, we highlighted the impact of our Germany C2C initiative on overall growth in the region. I am pleased that Germany C2C volume growth remained positive even as we began to lap the rollout of these changes in March of last year. In the U.K., we did see some softness in C2C volumes during the quarter, while the new U.K. digital sales reporting requirements came into effect. We are currently working to educate sellers that many of them actually do not incur taxes for selling pre-owned items.
In addition, benefits from our halo attribution change in Q2 of last year led to extraordinary growth in first-party advertising overall, which will create more challenging year-over-year comparisons for the remainder of this year. However, we do expect a recovery in advertising growth during the second half of 2024, driven by continued adoption and optimization of our first-party ad products.
Yes, I’d really say, it’s threefold, Colin. I’d say, first, it’s the focus category work that we’re doing. You see us not only kind of expanding what we’re doing there, but investing in categories that we’ve already launched before, like what we announced in collectibles with the Collectors and Goldin this quarter, what we’re seeing in terms of the growth of luxury, of P&A, refurbished at 5%. So that’s probably the first thing I’d say. The second is just the geo work that we’re doing in specific geographies. If you look at the work that we did in Germany on C2C, we continue to see healthy returns from that. We’re more than a year from launching that. We launched that in Q1 of last year and we’re continuing to see positive C2C momentum in Germany and healthy metrics and encouraging numbers from our CSAT standpoint.
So that’s the second. And the third, I would say, is the efforts that we have against our horizontal innovations. So, we’ve talked about things like magical listing of simplifying the selling flow. We continue to invest in search, in CRM, and a number of horizontal initiatives. I’d call out two that we talked about this quarter, which are Explore and Shop the Look, new AI capabilities that we’re launching first in fashion to really create a new browsing experience. So all three of those together is what gives us the confidence in moving forward and how we feel good about what we put out there.
I would say, the backdrop remains weaker in Europe than it does in the U.S., where U.S. is in better shape. If you look at e-commerce growth rates in U.K. and Germany this quarter, they’re negative and that’s overall, and obviously, we play more in discretionary than consumables. So I think this is where our model is really winning, right? Our model is working because we have global demand. We’ve really focused in on non-new in season over the last couple of years and we can provide value in a marketplace like this.
We can be a great avenue for selling in terms of consumer demand. And I think it’s why we reached the milestone this year or this quarter of now 40% of our inventory is pre-loved or refurbished is because we’re seeing strength from the value proposition that we’ve built and it’s resonating with the consumer.
And what we’re doing in the U.K., U.K. is a unique market for us.
We have very strong awareness and we’re a leading player in recommence, but we view the fashion category as really a gateway to recommence. Pre-owned apparel shoppers are really valuable to our business, and what we see is that 30% of our C2C sellers actually sell in pre-owned apparel.
mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
