eBay Launches Videos

May 8th, 2007

In the last post, I talked about how we’ve been thinking about the stylization of video content even in commerce context. An article came out today in AdAge that shows how one very important company has thought through the same issue: eBay.

A couple of weeks ago, eBay announced here that they were going to let users start creating links to videos they had created to sell their products.

But that was, as they say, the least of it. As AdAge reports, eBay hired CAA who hired Smuggler Production who are creating 200 videos which are already inspiring other sellers to create their own videos. In addition, Smuggler is creating short videos about successful product sales. While today users are only allowed to link to the videos (and the links are kind of hard to find), soon eBay will move to full hosting.

All of the videos I’ve been able to watch (or read about) have been done with a strong emphasis on entertainment over information. The videos will also apparently attach to the seller’s profile after the sale is complete (as opposed to, say, similar products). So the purpose of the video appears to be about raising the profile of the creator / seller and branding more than a “seeing is believing” approach to selling. In theory, that fun patina should rub off on the eBay brand.

I like it. It’s very complementary to other examples of the “media / commerce” collision which we’ve started to cover here.

BTW – Here’s a link to another to a blog called “dot.com to dot.bomb and beyond”. Peter concludes by wondering whether eBay will buy Expo. Hmm….hasn’t come up yet.

Entry Filed under: Collison of Media & Commerce