Last year, eBay CEO Devin Wenig outlined eBay’s turnaround plan, noting at the time that its friction-free marketplace, where just about anything can be found for sale, also made several areas of e-commerce more complicated. Since then, eBay has announced a series of improvements to search, personalization and logistics that seem to be taking on Amazon, and emulating some of its approaches.
Some of that paid off early on: The holiday season last year helped bring two million additional active buyers across eBay’s platforms in the quarter, for a total of 167 million global active buyers. Fourth quarter revenue rose 3.1% to $2.4 billion, and its marketplace revenue was up 4% in the quarter on a currency-neutral basis and flat on an as-reported basis.
