Machine learning is all the rage, and eBay is buying its way in via an acquisition of a startup named SalesPredict.
SalesPredict is a learning engine that uses your order history to suggest new items you might want to buy. It’s also well suited for marketing, helping businesses target only those who are most likely to buy a product or service.
To that, eBay seems to be trying to compete with Amazon; look at a product on Amazon, and a carousel on the front page changes to show you that and similar items, as well as any complimentary purchases you may want to make.
In a statement, Vice President and General Manager of Structured Data at eBay Amit Menipaz said “SalesPredict’s deep expertise in predictive analytics and machine learning will contribute to eBay’s structured data efforts. For our buyers, it will help us better understand the price differentiating attributes of our products, and, for our sellers, it will help us build out the predictive models that can define the probability of selling a given product, at a given price over time.”
The acquisition should help eBay become more contextual, which is necessary to stay relevant. SalesPredict Co-Founder and CEO Yaron Zakai-Or said “In partnership with eBay’s broader structured data team, we will help arm eBay sellers with more information about the value of items, ultimately helping to increase customer sales conversions.”
It’s just curious this wasn’t part of eBay’s DNA the entire time.
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