Australians may have set a Black Friday sales record, but eBay is betting they still have credit to spend on the local launch of eBay Live, a real-time streaming sale service that’s tapping celebrity cachet to move collectibles, toys, comics, and fashion.
Echoing sites in the US, UK, and Germany, eBay Live Australia features streams by sellers like eBay veteran ozzie.collectables, with AFL player Buddy Franklin leading a roster of celebrity guests engaging with shoppers through the infomercial-styled format.
Heartbreak High actress and Pokémon fan Chloe Hayden, for one, will join an auction of rare Pokémon cards priced from $0.01 – lauding the live engagement with “collectors and enthusiasts” that, she said, “means we’re celebrating those surprises together.”
The format “combines the excitement of live shopping with the variety, value and unique finds Australians expect from eBay,” said eBay Live Australia country manager Alaister Low, citing eBay research that 48 per cent shop driven by fear of missing out (FOMO).
“Australians love a great deal and the thrill of the chase,” he said, “but they also crave authentic experiences” – noting that half of the 1,025 Australian survey respondents said they had missed out on “coveted” limited edition items in the past.
eBay Live addresses this with formats including fixed-time auctions and extended auctions where late bids send bidding into overtime – reviving the auctions that turned eBay into an ecommerce giant with 20 million active sellers and 134 million buyers.
Soaring retail drives experimentation with new sales formats
Livestream shopping is exploding, credited with reviving at-home shopping as eBay Live fights for shoppers’ attention against the likes of TikTok, Whatnot and Alibaba’s Taobao Live – with live-commerce shoppers set to spend $103 billion ($US68 billion) by 2026.
Live sales, BigCommerce notes, allow brands to showcase products in action, create a sense of urgency and exclusivity for buyers, grab buyers’ interest with celebrity hosts, enable real-time interaction during demos and sales, and streamline the purchase flow.
EBay’s Australian auction format comes on the heels of a robust Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend, with e-commerce giant Shopify reporting that sales over the period reached a record $22 billion ($US14.6 billion) – up 27 per cent from last year.
The most popular products bought by Australians were clothing tops, cosmetics, dresses, activewear, fitness and nutrition – but these don’t feature on eBay Live, which is focused on products whose limited supply drives bidding in the heat of the moment.
EBay hopes its live auction format will attract shoppers eager to grab bargains or exclusive collectibles hawked by celebrity guests. Photo: Supplied
Some industry watchers are attributing the surge in sales to shoppers’ rapid adoption of generative AI (genAI) tools, with the likes of ChatGPT recently adding commerce services that let the chatbot find and secure deals from the likes of Etsy and Shopify.
Fully 35 per cent of Australian shoppers plan to use an AI tool as a shopping assistant during this year’s holiday sales, a recent PayPal survey found, with genAI usage skewed towards a younger demographic as 56 per cent of under 45s set to shop with genAI.
Social media ennui is forcing retailers to innovate
Despite the hype over surging sales numbers, online retail is being increasingly buffeted by consumers’ changing relationships with social media, including growing social media fatigue, which is making selling harder as customers tune out sales messages.
The sales relationship will be further disrupted when the under-16 social media ban breaks advertisers’ relationships with the crucial tween demographic, to whom advertisers have spent massive sums building brands and promoting products online.
Expect retailers to continue innovating as a result, with augmented-reality ‘try on’ tools and virtual shopping and sales training technologies likely to join the mix as consumers – and supporting technologies such as AR glasses – explore new shopping methods.
Yet even though research company Roy Morgan noted increasing buying sentiment, overall consumer confidence declined going into the Black Friday weekend with CEO Michele Levine flagging a “continued slide of online retailers and marketplaces.”
That saw the likes of Temu and Shein – massively popular with buyers – plumbing the depths of Australia’s least trusted brands.
With inflation expectations surging to 5.6 per cent over the next two years, just how these changes play out heading into the holiday season and new year – and to what degree new shopping technologies can arrest their slide – is anybody’s guess.
“People are getting overwhelmed by all the content out there,” said Top Marketing Agency digital marketing expert Jeff Sherman, who noted that “low-quality or repetitive posts make scrolling feel like a chore, and a lot of users are opening apps just to fill time instead of to connect or discover.”
“Brands that create content that feels useful, fun, or authentic are the ones that stand out and keep people interested,” he continued, advising that “marketers should focus on ways to get people involved rather than just watching.”
“Telling stories that are real, relatable, and entertaining helps brands stay on people’s radar – and those who make their content engaging and authentic will not only hold attention but also build trust and loyalty over time.”
