eBay's quarterly revenue rose 14% to $3.2 billion, and the company says AI tools are making it easier to list and sell used items.
eBay says it is getting easier to sell the stuff in your closet, and more people are buying used goods. The online marketplace reported third-quarter revenue of $3.2 billion on Oct. 28, up 14% from a year earlier. Management credited a push into AI tools and a growing habit of buying secondhand.
On an earnings call, eBay leaders said they are focused on removing hassle for professional sellers. They also want to attract collectors, using AI tools and livestreamed auctions, which are live video sales where people bid in real time.
Recommerce, the term for reselling used items, is a big part of the story. In eBay's latest Recommerce Report, 47% of surveyed consumers said they buy secondhand items at least monthly. A year ago, that figure was 35%.
The key tool is eBay's "magical listing" feature. It uses computer vision, which lets software recognize what is in a photo, along with machine learning to estimate item details and suggest a price. eBay says it has cut listing time for casual sellers by about one-third.
CEO Jamie Iannone said AI has an outsized effect on eBay's consumer-to-consumer business because it removes the friction that keeps people from listing items and selling them successfully.
Everyday sellers are the most direct audience. Iannone said the average household has about $4,000 of stuff that could be sold online, and less than 20% of it is. A faster way to list could help close that gap.
Younger shoppers are also part of this. eBay bought Depop, a social shopping app popular with Gen Z and millennial users, for $1.4 billion earlier this year. Iannone said Depop's U.S. merchandise volume more than doubled from a year ago. eBay's main marketplace has historically skewed older.
At the high end, the quarter included a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence that sold for over $3.6 million on eBay's Goldin marketplace, and a 2005 Porsche Carrera GT that sold for $5 million.
For now, the numbers show a company growing and betting that selling used items will keep getting simpler.
If you have unused items at home, eBay's AI listing tool may speed up selling them, but real earnings per seller were not shared.
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