Can Gen-AI shopping agents improve the shortcomings of algorithm-based search engines? If the answer is yes, an improved shopping experience could give eBay sellers who are frustrated with the current state of Search reason to celebrate. But as sellers have learned, execution is everything – and change can be very, very disruptive.
The expansion to “agentic AI” may be eBay’s biggest move since it changed the default sort order of its search engine to “Best Match” 17 years ago. Former eBay manager Adam Nash explained at the time – not long after leaving the company in 2007 – that until Best Match, eBay search had been extremely “literal” and “transparent”:
“Until changes were made in the last few years, eBay search would literally do only the following:
1) Look at the keywords entered by the buyer
2) Look at the title keywords of every listing on the site
3) Return only the listings that had 100% of the keywords entered by the buyer
4) Sort the listings by “time remaining””
Since the introduction of Best Match, eBay looks at a multitude of factors when deciding how to rank listings in search results, such as price, shipping costs, delivery speed, seller feedback ratings, and buyer behavioral patterns.
Nash called eBay’s 2008 move to make Best Match the default in search “bigger than anything I can think of in the history of the eBay buyer experience.” Agentic shopping has the potential to do that again.
When eBay announced on Tuesday it had begun rolling out its new AI shopping agent to some shoppers, it said it would show up wherever the user was in their buying journey, either by reacting to a user’s request or through predictive messaging inline on the page the user was visiting.
“Seamlessly woven into your shopping journey, this intelligent agent delivers real-time, hyper-personalized product picks and expert guidance based on your shopping preferences as you explore our marketplace. From pinpointing the perfect gift for your best friend to assembling the ideal Spring Break wardrobe, our agent makes discovery effortless, fun, and uniquely tailored to you.”
Presumably eBay’s AI shopping agent is powered by the OpenAI Operator agent, which eBay had disclosed in January it was using in order to “help buyers discover more of the things they love, and enabling sellers to be successful and grow their sales.”
In its May 6th announcement, eBay said its new AI shopping agent was an evolution “from simple chatbots to conversational and interactive agents that are equipped to understand, interact, and anticipate user needs,” adding, “Such capabilities have the potential to enable us to lead the next generation of shopping and selling, fueling marketplace growth, and solidifying our position in AI-powered ecommerce.”
Rivals are not ignoring agentic shopping either. Etsy is using “Algotorial curation” and posted the following video on YouTube last month:
And big-dog Amazon launched Rufus in February of 2024, calling it a “a generative AI-powered expert shopping assistant trained on Amazon’s extensive product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As, and information from across the web to answer customer questions on a variety of shopping needs and products, provide comparisons, and make recommendations based on conversational context.”
eBay said its new AI shopping agent is currently available to a small percentage of US customers and will become available to more users on a rolling basis.
Some important and unanswered questions remain for sellers. How might the AI shopping agent impact Promoted Listings that sellers use to boost visibility on eBay?
And, as was the case with Best Match, agentic agents may further decrease transparency into how eBay selects listings to display to shoppers using the tool. That may be among the biggest concern for sellers.