Kijiji, eBay and StubHub are Canada’s happiest e-commerce family – and now they’ll be selling ads together.
The companies have announced that they’ll be bringing together sales teams to build a single internal sales unit. The move is intended to streamline the sales process and give buyers more efficient cross-channel access to 13 million unique Canadian visitors across the three e-commerce platforms.
“Together, eBay, Kijiji and Stubhub are undisputedly the most powerful way to reach the largest audience of motivated shoppers in Canada,” said Mark Lister, managing director, advertising and seed businesses at Kijiji, in a release. “Our growing audience – motivated shoppers who are ready to buy – are actively engaged, presenting opportunities to businesses of all types and sizes to reach them at the right place and time.”
eBay was previously represented in Canada by Casale Media, a Canadian programmatic media and technology company. Lister said that all sales for the three companies will now be conducted in-house and without external representation, though their inventory will still be available through digital marketplaces like advertising exchanges.
Bringing sales in-house and combining the three properties is especially important for audience targeting, which enables advertisers to identify and reach fine-grain audiences like product intenders and real-estate buyers.
A cross-channel approach will mean advertisers have easier access to pooled data, so they can follow audiences across the three sites. It will also help improve retargeting (showing ads to users for products they have visited), a technique that dominates many direct-response marketers’ digital toolboxes.
eBay launched Kijiji in Canada in 2005, and it has since grown to become Canada’s dominant classifieds marketplace. eBay acquired online ticket sales vendor StubHub in 2007.
