eBay Seller Release: eBay to support Amazon ASINs

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ASINeBay want to make it easier for you to add listings to the site, so much so that they’re going to start support their arch rival Amazon’s Product Identifiers.

From February 2017 eBay will be expanding the types of product identifiers you can use to include Amazon and Google product identifiers, as well as product identifiers you can create yourself. The new Identifiers allowed are:

  • Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN): If you also list on Amazon, you can use the same block of 10 letters and/or numbers on eBay too.
  • Google product identifier
  • Seller-generated product identifiers

The downside for some sellers will be that every listing in an affected category must carry at least one Product Identifier. The old “Does Not Apply” option will be banned when creating new listings and if you’re one of the sellers who blithely added Does Not Apply” to all your listings in the past, you’re going to have to edit it out at some point in 2017 and replace with legitimate Product Identifiers.

eBay to support Amazon ASINs. You’re kidding right?

This might seem like a bit of a shocker, eBay embracing Amazon ASINs and allowing you to list with them. Is it symptomatic of eBay’s decades long failure to instigate a product catalogue? Perhaps partly, but there’s a more compelling reason for eBay to support ASINs.

Under Devin Wenig’s new leadership of eBay things have changed. He’s already said that eBay have phaffed about too much in the past with one direction this year and the opposite next year. He’s bemoaned previous leaders lack of commitment to catalogue data. Things are achanging at eBay headquarters in San Jose and it’s starting to filter down to the front line.

So listing with Amazon ASINs as Product Identifiers immediately allows eBay to map all Amazon’s data to the listings you create, but building a product catalogue is not the main thrust of this initiative. It’s about making it easy to get all of your inventory on eBay. If you’ve previously listed a product on Amazon you can instantly upload it to eBay.

Of course if you already use any of the plethora of Channel Management tools available, you’ll be able to upload every product you have listed on Amazon straight to eBay along with the ASIN, pretty much at the click of a button.

Upload in bulk with eBay Product Identifiers (ePIDs

eBay want to make it ultra easy for you to list your entire inventory on eBay, so from October 2016, you’ll be able to upload your entire catalogue to eBay making listing and relisting simple. Using your catalogue, eBay will generate a unique set of eBay product identifiers (ePIDs) which you can use to build your brand on eBay.

4 Responses

  1. Why does Ebay not embrace Amazon’s site reliability as well?

    Amazon days of site problems in August: None

    Ebay days of site problems in August; Sixteen

    (source Downdetector)

  2. Isn’t a GTIN or MPN required for eBay to advertise the listing with Google?

    And why not fix what’s broken first? Still can’t use individual MPN on muti-variation listings!

  3. Are you sure that entering the Amazon ASIN allows ebay to map all the Amazon data to the listings you create?
    It doesn’t say anything about this in the seller release. Just that you can use an ASIN as a product identifier.
    If it is the case, how would ebay get the data from Amazon? Surely not by scraping the product pages? The valid values on Amazon are all different to Ebays items specifics anyway

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