eBay Bolsters Machine Learning Capabilities With SalesPredict Acquisition

Published: July 11, 2016

eBay announced it has agreed to acquire SalesPredict, an Israel-based predictive analytics company. SalesPredict is eBay’s latest acquisition intended to support its artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science efforts. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Upon the close of the transaction, some of SalesPredict’s employees will join eBay’s structured data organization, working from eBay’s Israeli Development Center in Netanya. SalesPredict Co-Founder and CEO Yaron Zakai-Or will serve as a Director of Product Management, Technology; and SalesPredict Co-Founder and CTO Kira Radinsky will become Director of Data Science & Chief Scientist, eBay Israel. Zakai-Or and eBay’s Abby Smith, Senior Director, Corporate Communications, would not comment on staffing levels at SalesPredict post-acquisition.

“The vision for SalesPredict is to mostly use it internally at eBay to improve the buyers’ and sellers’ experiences,” Zakai-Or said. He added that SalesPredict will not be sold “to new customers, but we’re committed to the success of our current customer base.”  

According to Smith, “Ebay has a major effort underway to better understand our inventory [and] our structured data process. This acquisition will help us have greater insights into the inventory. It will help us understand which inventory and product attributes we should emphasize,” she said.

Get the latest B2B Marketing News & Trends delivered directly to your inbox!

“Today’s agreement to acquire SalesPredict builds upon our recently completed acquisition of Expertmaker, marking another milestone for eBay in our plans to apply world-class learning approaches to building the world’s most comprehensive product catalog and pricing guide,” said Amit Menipaz, Vice President and General Manager of Structured Data at eBay. “SalesPredict’s deep expertise in predictive analytics and machine learning will contribute to eBay’s structured data efforts.  For our buyers, it will help us better understand the price differentiating attributes of our products, and, for our sellers, it will help us build out the predictive models that can define the probability of selling a given product, at a given price over time.”

SalesPredict will contribute to eBay’s data processing and enrichment efforts, specifically with respect to inventory insights, the company said.

“With more than 900 million listings on eBay, there is an enormous opportunity to extend our experience in machine learning and predictive analytics to help eBay identify important product attributes that can affect the price of a product,” Zakai-Or said, in a statement. “In partnership with eBay’s broader structured data team, we will help arm eBay sellers with more information about the value of items, ultimately helping to increase customer sales conversions.”

Zakai-Or and Kira Radinsky co-founded SalesPredict in 2012.

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
B2B Marketing Exchange
B2B Marketing Exchange East
Campaign Optimization Series
Buyer Insights & Intelligence Series
Strategy & Planning Series