eBay February Marketing Update: TV adverts, Half.com, Unwanted Gifts, CES

[mandy]

***A Message from Gary Briggs – Update on Marketing*** 

Hi everyone. As you know, our "IT" campaign was highly successful in driving buyers to the site during the busy holiday season. Of course, it's our job to drive buyers to the site throughout the year, so while the tinsel and lights were being put away, we were busy getting the word out that "whatever it is, you can get IT on eBay." Here are a few recent marketing highlights I wanted to share with you.

More TV Commercials
The holidays may be over, but our TV campaign rolls on! Our "IT" commercials have been running for the past month on primetime shows such as CSI: Miami, Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty. By next week, they will have reached about three-quarters of our target audience an average of 6 times.

To check out our current eBay TV commercials, go to www.whatisit.com.

Get the Gift You Really Wanted
A recent survey we conducted revealed that 57% of Americans receive unwanted gifts for the holidays. (After all, how many fondue sets does one household really need?) According to our findings, 40% of these people consider selling these extra gifts on eBay to help offset holiday expenses. It was a nice boost to have our survey mentioned on NBC's popular TODAY show.

In addition, we sent out 800,000 mailers in late December and early January, reminding sellers and buyers to think of eBay first for those gifts they didn't want or can't use. eBay makes it easy -- sell what you received, and buy what you really wanted instead.

Back-To-School with Half.com
The New Year means back-to-school time for second-semester students. For Half.com, this is a particularly important season, so we've been focused on building awareness about Half.com within the college market.

Back-to-school advertisements ran in over 100 college newspapers around the country. What's more, eBay partnered with Facebook to reach over 6 million of their users with ads for Half.com.

We even did some in-person promotion, handing out much-needed coffee to students during finals week at campuses such as Columbia, Temple, Penn State, UConn, and Rutgers. Thousands of students got the message that "Half.com is a great place to get great deals on textbooks" along with their dose of caffeine.

These marketing efforts were coupled with an online back-to-school Half.com sweepstakes, also held last month. The campaign worked to drive excitement about Half.com and raise awareness. Over 1,500 prizes were awarded, ranging from a home theater and Xbox 360 package, to Apple iPods and Half.com gift certificates.

CES in Las Vegas
Finally, last month staff from eBay, PayPal and Skype participated in the Consumer Electronics Show (known commonly as CES) held in Las Vegas. eBay and PayPal hosted a number of eBay University seminars and seller meetings to educate and network with people. Our colleagues at Skype had the chance to show off some of their new hardware devices -- they made a big splash with the introduction of their new desktop phones that enable you to use Skype without a PC.