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eBay’s Quarterly Business Results
Last week, we shared eBay’s first earnings report for 2023. Here are some of the key takeaways:
- Q1 was another strong eBay quarter, with the marketplace exceeding expectations across every metric and reporting $18.4 Billion total GMV.
- Site-wide investments delivered innovative tech and tools, from AI to eBay International Shipping, supporting seller growth and opening new global markets.
We’ve been on a multi-year journey to build and deliver great experiences within our Focus Category strategy, and we continued to see progress on this front in Q1. These results demonstrate how our investments in enthusiast categories are key to the success of the marketplace. That focus, however, is by no means an indication of slowing down on horizontal innovations. We’re continuously emphasizing technology and tool upgrades designed to transform your day-to-day selling activities, and drive growth across categories.
First, let’s look at where we demonstrated significant growth.
Focus Categories Continue to Deliver
For yet another quarter, there is strong evidence that our Focus Category strategy is leading eBay’s growth. Sneakers, Luxury, Collectibles, Motors/P&A and Refurb collectively outpaced the rest of the marketplace by roughly eight points—a testament to what’s possible when we tackle the unique needs and opportunities of core enthusiast categories.
Case in point: our largest focus category, Motors Parts & Accessories (P&A) was the prominent GMV growth contributor in Q1. February’s launch of eBay Guaranteed Fit, and its accompanying full-funnel marketing campaign across TV, streaming video, audio and social channels, helped drive the metrics we saw in (and intend to continue beyond) Q1. Add our recent Tire Installation experience makeover, and we’re just seeing the start of how far P&A’s GMV needle can move.
eBay Refurbished was another Q1 standout. Consumers looked for value against the backdrop of an uncertain economy and this, combined with our focus on growing this category through marketing, seller partnerships, and buyer education, accelerated Refurb into double-digit growth status. As more consumers become aware of the value + sustainability benefits of refurbished items we expect Refurb’s year-over-year growth to continue.
Site-wide Investments in Tech and Tools
Millions of times each day, you engage and create connections with buyers using eBay’s technology and tools. With this in mind, our work to improve your experiences gained exciting momentum in Q1—particularly around artificial intelligence (AI).
eBay has operated a Core AI platform for years, but during Q1 we further ramped up development with substantial results. In Search, we improved retrieval and ranking functionality to more efficiently locate and present your most relevant listings to buyers—implementing incremental but profound changes that are already measurably improving sales conversion.
We also re-engineered our proprietary computer vision technology to dramatically improve the speed and efficacy of image search and “see visually similar results” requests, to unlock more buyer discovery of unique and hard-to-describe items from your incredible inventory. For example, buyers can now also search and navigate listings by pattern, shape or even size, instead of by just text, to more quickly zero in on the item they love.
Many of us have heard of Generative AI, like Chat GPT, which is certainly a hot topic in the news. We’re currently in the process of creating a plug-in that will allow you to auto-generate item descriptions based on content already available across the web. And soon we’ll roll out tests for sellers to pre-populate categories and item specifics from a single photo—so you spend less time creating listings and more on growing and managing your business.
The goal of these investments is to deliver better experiences that help you succeed in the always highly-competitive ecommerce landscape… As our CEO, Jamie, would say, we’re striving to deliver you a truly magical selling experience, and I’m excited to see the creative ways you apply these incredible technologies and tools to your businesses.
eBay International Shipping
Buyers come to eBay from every corner of the world for items they can’t find anywhere else. To build on this fundamental insight we drew up significant international shipping upgrades—making your listings more widely and easily available to global buyers.
In late last year, we began our rollout of eBay International Shipping—leveraging eBay’s scale to reduce costs, remove headaches, and improve trust for cross-border transactions. Since then, 1.5 million of you have made the transition to eBay International Shipping, making your unique inventory discoverable and available to buyers in more than 190 markets around the world. It’s still early days, but over the long-term we believe eBay International Shipping will increase seller access, engagement and sales to the widest possible global audience.
Fourth Annual Up & Running Grants
Though technically not part of our Q1 earnings update, probably one of the most meaningful investments I’m privileged to oversee is our Up & Running Grants program. Since 2020, we’ve committed $500,000 a year in funds to this program—awarding $10,000 each to 50 U.S. eBay sellers with the goal of supporting their business growth and success. This year, we’ve added an additional stipend worth $500 for each grantee to use towards essential office technology and tools provided by eBay Refurbished.
I hope you’ll apply or share the news with your fellow sellers—applications are now open and close June 9. You can visit this link for details. And if you’re an eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast listener, you can dial in to hear grantee T.A. Ewart discuss winning the 2020 Up & Running Grant during the pandemic, and its impact to his eBay store: The Value Comics.
Wrap Up
Q1 gave us multiple proof points of how investments—small and big—are unleashing our potential and setting us on the path to a bright 2023.I’m proud that we’re able to continue investing – particularly in light of the challenging economic environment – in service of you, our sellers.
There’s still lots at stake and lots of work ahead, but we’re committed to accelerating this momentum by leaning into better experiences, technologies and tools to grow your business—and give you the opportunity to earn an income around your passions. By now, I hope most of you know our internal mantra: “eBay succeeds when our sellers succeed.” This has never been more true, and I look forward to the future we’re creating together.
Thank you for your partnership and as always—thank you for selling on eBay.
Adam Ireland
VP & GM, eBay US
