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eBay 10 Years On
October 13, 2009
Last week eBay Australia’s website celebrated its 10th anniversary, so I thought it timely to have a look at the website’s performance over the past few years.
Over the past 10 years eBay Australia has had many local competitors come and go, amongst them GoFish and Stuff, only to see them fold under the continued success of the eBay brand. In other sectors, established brands have risen and fallen and through all of this eBay has continued to prosper.
eBay Australia has the second highest online penetration rate amongst local Internet users, only behind eBay UK, when compared to the markets measured by Experian Hitwise. This highlights the strength and dominance of the eBay brand in the Australian market.
The chart below aggregates the top 10 eBay sites visited by local users, highlights the comparative strength of the brand across Australia, UK, US, Canada and Singapore.
In the past three years Australian Internet users’ visits to the online Auction industry has declined 7.8%, impacted by increased competition from Classifieds brands such as Gumtree and Craigslist and the rising share of visits attributed to Social Media brands such as Facebook.
The Classified industry has increased 41.7% over the past three years (September 2009 compared to October 2006) on the back of large increases by the local Gumtree websites (200 to 900%+). Auctions websites maintain a commanding share of visits enjoying 7 times as many visits by comparison to Classifieds websites and one in every 49 visits by Australian Internet Users.
eBay is the dominant brand in Australia, with 39 of its branded websites accounting for 88.3% of Auction visits. eBay Australia accounts for 81.9% of eBay websites, and 72.3% of all Auction visits.
Ranked as the leading Auctions and Shopping Classifieds website for the past three years, eBay is currently the number 7 most visited website by Australian Internet users behind Google (.com.au and .com), Facebook, Live Mail, NineMSN and YouTube.
The term ‘ebay’ was the fourth most searched for term during the 4 weeks ending 3 October 2009 also featuring the in the 6th and 54th highest volume search terms, consolidating these terms places the eBay brand as the third most search for brand online behind Facebook and YouTube, with almost 1 in every 100 search terms containing the eBay brand, (0.98%).
eBay’s audience could be described as spanning all elements of Australian society with an emphasis on blue collar workers in new and outer suburbs plus country and coastal centres. For the 4 weeks ending 3 October 2009 the four most over represented Mosaic Lifestyle Groups also reflect the largest share of visits to eBay. Over the past 12 months there has been minimal change to audience profile of eBay offering opportunities to develop strategies and tactics to increase share of the more affluent and metropolitan Mosaic Groups.
Other key statistics include:
* Average visit time increased 55% since October 2006 to 29 minutes 54 seconds.
* Gender split 53.3% Female, 46.7% Male (index of 101 and 99 against the Australian Online Population)
* 25-34 (108) and 35-44 (119) age-groups are over-represented on eBay Australia compared to the online population and make up a combined 46.3% of visits.
* 81.8% of audience on east coast states (QLD, NSW, VIC and TAS), with Tasmania (112), SA (112) and VIC (106) having the highest over representation against the online population.
Happy Birthday eBay!
Posted by Alan Long at 12:17 PM
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In Categories Auctions | Retail | Shopping and Classifieds
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Comments
Hi Lyndon,
It's a fair point, although the intention was to look at eBay as an independent brand in this instance versus their overall business.
Thanks for adding to the post.
Alan
Posted by Alan | October 14, 2009 11:23 AM
Interesting article Alan, The decline in auction traffic could also be why Ebay brought in Ebay classifieds to offer sellers an alternative to the auction platform.
Posted by Photo Ads | November 11, 2009 06:37 AM
Hi,
It might be useful to note in your article that eBay own gumtree and are a shareholder in Craigslist.
Although it could be considered the sites are competitors to the eBay brand - not mentioning this important fact in your article seems a bit strange.
Lyndon
Posted by Lyndon | October 14, 2009 10:15 AM