How eBay Is Making a Comeback at 30 With Powerful New AI Tools
eBay is reinventing itself with AI-powered tools that simplify selling, enhance shopping, and boost engagement. As competition rises, the 30-year-old marketplace is using decades of unique data to strengthen its position and attract a new generation of buyers and sellers.
Once thought to be a fading pioneer of the internet, eBay is getting a new lease on life courtesy of AI. When CEO Jamie Iannone arrived at the company in 2020, eBay was under fire from investors, losing market share and struggling to keep pace with a changing ecommerce landscape dominated by giants. But following a pandemic-fueled boost and key investments in AI, eBay is positioning itself for a new era of growth.
This year, the company launched several AI-powered features from automated shipping estimates to a conversational shopping agent alongside the partnership with OpenAI. These tools aim to make buying and selling easier, more accurate, and more engaging for users.
Investors seem to agree: since 2020, eBay's stock has risen 75%, beating several giants of tech in 2024.
A Competitive Market With New Challenges
Yet, despite its longevity, its share of the US ecommerce market has continued to decline, from more than 7% in 2016 to under 3% today. Its rivals, including Amazon, Shein, Etsy, and Poshmark, continue to aggressively expand.
Yet Iannone sees eBay's age as an advantage. With decades of listings and buyer behavior data plus 2.4 billion active listings the platform has a rich foundation for training advanced AI systems.
AI Tools Transforming the Seller Experience
The pandemic created a wave of "accidental entrepreneurs" as people, looking to declutter and earn some extra money, turned to eBay. In support of these casual sellers, eBay introduced AI tools that automate some of the more time-consuming listing tasks.
A new "magic listing" tool automatically creates product descriptions when a seller posts a photo. Image enhancement through AI can clean backgrounds and make the items more appealing.
eBay launched an AI assistant for regular sellers that can answer frequent buyer questions about products by using the product listing data to help reduce message fatigue and enable quicker response times.
Analysts estimate the average US household has $3,000–$4,000 worth of unused items a huge opportunity for resale platforms.
If eBay can help owners list these items more easily, it could significantly grow its gross merchandise volume. The company recently reported a 10% year-over-year rise in GMV, showing early momentum.
AI Enhancing the Shopping Experience
About 70% of eBay's transactions come from enthusiasts who already know how to deep search on the platform. To attract new or occasional shoppers, eBay launched an AI shopping agent called eBay.ai.
Users can input in natural language what they're looking for, and the bot gives personalized product recommendations. The aim is to eliminate friction for the less experienced shoppers and open eBay to those beyond the niche collectors.
Analysts say these improvements could further make eBay stand out, particularly because a place for rare, collectible, and affordable items is what tends to make the site unique from other general retailers.
Facing Strong Competition in AI Shopping
Yet, even with those enhancements, eBay finds itself in an AI-heavy competitive environment. Google, OpenAI, Amazon, and new startups are rapidly building AI shopping agents. In fact, the bot from Amazon is projected to generate $10 billion in extra annual sales.
But CEO Iannone says third-party AI tools could still benefit eBay. The company is looking into OpenAI’s “instant checkout” program, which would let users shop eBay listings directly inside ChatGPT and elsewhere.
Balancing AI With Human Connection
Despite its rapid AI expansion, eBay says it doesn't want to lose the community feel that made the platform famous. In September, eBay acquired Tise, a social marketplace that lets buyers follow sellers much like they do influencers.
Iannone insists that human-to-human interaction remains central to the platform's identity.
“We don’t want AI to replace the connection between buyers and sellers,” he said. “We want it to enhance the experience not remove what makes eBay unique.”
A New Era for a Classic Marketplace As eBay enters its 30th year, that embrace of AI may be key to the next chapter. Modernizing the seller experience, streamlining search, and leveraging its unrivaled historical dataset in ways designed to strengthen its relevance in a crowded ecommerce market proves even the most obvious of legacy platforms can innovate their way into the future.
Source: CNN