eBay 2007 Annual Report Download - page 12

Marketplaces Value Proposition
We seek to attract buyers and sellers to our community by offering:
Buyers Sellers
• Selection • Access to broad global markets
• Value • Cost effective marketing and distribution
• Convenience • Access to large buyer base
• Entertainment • Good conversion rates
We believe our Marketplaces platforms make inefficient markets more efficient because:
• Our global community of users can easily and inexpensively communicate, exchange information and
complete transactions;
• Our Marketplaces platforms include more than a hundred million items on any given day and make available
to our users a wide variety and selection of goods; and
• We bring buyers and sellers together for lower fees than traditional intermediaries.
We seek to create a global platform that enables individuals and businesses of all types and sizes to access
broad markets. We have aggregated a significant number of buyers, sellers and items listed for sale, which, in turn,
has resulted in a vibrant online commerce environment. Our sellers generally enjoy good conversion rates and our
buyers enjoy an extensive selection of goods and services. Key components of our community philosophy are
maintaining honest and open marketplaces and treating individual users with respect. We seek to maintain the
satisfaction and loyalty of our buyers and sellers by offering a variety of community and support features, such as
announcement and bulletin boards, customer support boards and personal pages, as well as other topical or
category-specific information exchanges.
Markets of goods with broad buyer and seller bases, wide product ranges and moderate shipping costs have
generally been successful on our Marketplaces platforms. Generally speaking, our Marketplaces platforms are more
effective, relative to available alternatives, at addressing markets of scarce new goods, end-of-life products and used
and vintage items. Our highest growth, however, has been in our fixed-price listing format, primarily for new
in-season items.
Our historical success has resulted largely from the size of our community of active users. We had
approximately 83 million active users at the end of 2007, compared to approximately 82 million at the end of
2006. We define an active user as any user who bid on, bought, or listed an item during the most recent 12-month
period.
Marketplaces Platforms Overview
Our Marketplaces platforms seek to bring buyers and sellers together through fully automated and easy-to-use
online websites that are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from any place in the world at any time. The
platforms include software tools and services, some available at no charge and others for a fee, that allow buyers and
sellers to trade with one another more easily and efficiently. The Marketplaces platforms consist of our core online
commerce platform, eBay.com and its localized counterparts, and adjacent platforms consisting of our classifieds
websites, as well as Half.com, Rent.com, Shopping.com and StubHub. Our Marketplaces platforms earn revenue
from, as the case may be, listing, feature, subscription and final value fees paid by sellers, lead referral fees,
transaction fees and advertising fees.
eBay.com Platform
Our Marketplaces core platform, eBay.com, includes our traditional auction-style format and fixed-price
formats such as Buy-It-Now and eBay Stores. We offer the core platform on localized websites in 28 countries. In
2007, our auction-style listing format accounted for approximately 60% of our Gross Merchandise Volume, or
GMV, which is the total value of all successfully closed items between users on our Marketplaces trading platform
websites during the period, regardless of whether the buyer and seller actually consummated the transaction
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