eBay has acquired analytics firm Terapeak in a deal that is expected to close before the end of the year. Terapeak will stay in Canada, where it’s currently based. It has long been established as the marketplace numbers partner of eBay and, indeed, Amazon.
Kevin North is the President and CEO of Terapeak and says: “eBay’s planned acquisition of Terapeak makes so much sense for everyone involved, particularly for our customers. We are excited to continue our vision of empowering merchants to discover what to sell on eBay and how to optimize their listings for maximum performance. Over time Terapeak’s capabilities will become naturally integrated with eBay’s Seller Hub, therefore becoming more robust and providing merchants with a single place to manage and elevate their ecommerce business.”
The Terapeak business unit will report into Bob Kupbens, Vice President of B2C Selling at eBay, and he commented: “Nearly two million sellers currently manage their eBay business on Seller Hub. Expanding Seller Hub to provide additional capabilities from Terapeak will help our sellers be even more successful and enable them to more effectively manage their businesses on eBay. We are committed to being the best partner to our sellers as we look to create the most powerful selling platform. The integration of Terapeak’s functionalities into Seller Hub – from sales history and performance enhancement opportunities to price guidance and comparisons – will continue to help eBay’s merchants scale their businesses on eBay.”
In the past year or so, eBay withdrew some of the data capabilities to Terapeak that were of most use to sellers, specifically named competitor information. It will be interesting to see whether the acquisition will bring that most valued info back.
This is also, perhaps, an acknowledgement that eBay sellers desperately require a whole lot more marketplace intelligence if they are to effectively manage their business and this has been an area where eBay has hitherto been lacking.
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“This is also, perhaps, an acknowledgement that eBay sellers desperately require a whole lot more marketplace intelligence if they are to effectively manage their business and this has been an area where eBay has hitherto been lacking.”
I bloody hope that it’s an acknowledgement, becuase every email i receive from ebay with so-called intelligence is anything but intelligent.
“you’re the cheapest for this item, ebay recommed dropping your price so you’re cheaper than the nearest competitor”.
“you sell more of these than you can buy in, ebay recommends cutting the sell price to lower than your cost price”.
“your sales are slow on this and competitors are cheaper, ebay recommends increasing your price by 17p”
“ebay recommend sourcing lighting from company X, who don’t make lighting”
I cancelled my sub as soon the they removed the competitor information so would welcome its return. What is more interesting to me though is some proper traffic analysis. This hasn’t been adequately replaced since Omniture was removed from Ebay.