eBay has added a further 90 advertisers to its private ad exchange since its launch last September and will continue to open up further audience data insight for brands and agencies.
The company launched the private ad exchange last autumn with around ten advertisers on board for the pilot phase. It has since claimed a further 90, taking the total to 100 advertisers, while the volume of impressions traded via the exchange has surged 600 per cent.
eBay’s head of programmatic advertising Guy Jones told The Drum it will continue to evolve the platform, opening up further audience data to premium advertisers, which will in time “more than double” its targets.
“We’ve made big strides in a short period of time and are no longer in the testing phase. Advertisers have seen some fantastic results, which means there is little churn and they are increasing their spend because it’s working,” he said.
eBay launched the private ad exchange on Rubicon Project’s REW platform, opening up previously unavailable audience data to advertisers in a real-time-bidding (RTB) environment.
Jones said it will continue to develop the product and seek out further advertisers. “This is not an area of the business that will stand still, we will evolve it in terms of what the technology providers can do and what additional audience insight we can open up for advertisers,” he said.
“The idea of understanding accurate – not inferred – purchase intent in real time is something very few publishers can do,” said Jones.
The RTB market, although still nascent, opens up big opportunities for advertisers, yet a lack of standardisation remains a challenge, he added.
“The conversation is still very much about the nuts and bolts and technical difficulties of plugging together systems, and there is still a lack of standardisation. It is important to bear in mind how new this is, but I think we will see a lot of progress in this space in the next year,” he added.
eBay has not yet revealed which brands are using the private ad exchange.