Remember when buyers would determine the prices of items on eBay by how much they were willing to bid? Now that eBay has deliberately moved away from the auction model, it is trying to understand pricing and will acquire a company to help it do so.
On Monday, eBay announced it will acquire SalesPredict, an Israeli company that “leverages advanced analytics to predict customer buying behavior and sales conversion.” eBay explained that the acquisition will support its artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science efforts to support its structured data plan.
“For our buyers,” eBay said, “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.”
SalesPredict cofounder 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.”
Upon the close of the transaction, a number of SalesPredict’s employees will join eBay’s structured data organization, working from eBay’s Israeli Development Center in Netanya. Zakai-Or will serve as a Director of Product Management, Technology, and SalesPredict Co-Founder and CTO Kira Radinsky will be Director of Data Science & Chief Scientist, eBay Israel.
The acquisition of SalesPredict follows eBay’s recent acquisition of Expertmaker, also made in order to bolster eBay’s structured data effort
