MediaMath’s TerminalOne™ Case Study: eBay’s Journey to Self-Service

CHALLENGES & GOALS

eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace, was keen to deliver optimised and targeted ad campaigns to help drive revenue in a number of European markets, and turned to MediaMath to help them to drive a programmatic approach, to enable the business to achieve this goal.

eBay’s long term commercial strategy was to take control of its own data and build a direct relationship with a partner who could help them to activate that data, and MediaMath’s dynamic service offering was one of the key reasons they were chosen as a technology partner.

The relationship began in 2012 as a managed service arrangement with MediaMath undertaking programmatic campaigns on eBay’s behalf via its TerminalOne™ platform, managing day-to-day optimisation and strategy, and reporting high-level results to key eBay representatives. With the aim of moving to a self-service model, eBay and MediaMath created and delivered a transition plan to bring the TerminalOne solution in house.

The goals of this approach included:

• Greater control over the deployment of first-party data
• Educating internal eBay staff on the benefits of programmatic
• Standardised measurement across different campaigns and media types, shifting from CPA to ROI
• Real-time reporting and campaign insights

SOLUTIONS

In Q4 of 2013, an existing eBay ad operations team was selected to transition into a programmatic optimisation team. MediaMath began a training program with this team, delivered in-person through the New Marketing Institute (NMI), MediaMath’s specialist educational arm that educates, empowers and engages marketing professionals.

The training was successful, and handover to the eBay team took place in Q1 2014 – this included an introduction to programmatic training, an overview of data strategy, and how to set up a campaign. MediaMath continued to manage the day-to-day optimisation of campaigns alongside the eBay team and provided support through regular meetings until the eBay team was ready to take complete control.

With eBay in the driver seat, MediaMath still maintained regular daily contact with the eBay team, reviewing their progress, largely in part to the complexity of their campaigns, which ran across markets in the UK, Germany, France, and Italy. Throughout 2014 the eBay team gradually took the lead, becoming completely self-serving on the platform.

RESULTS

eBay’s transition from managed to self-service was extremely successful and as a result, all campaigns are now managed by eBay’s in-house MediaMath-trained team. eBay and MediaMath continue to have weekly check-in meetings to answer any queries and ensure that the business is gaining the maximum benefit from MediaMath’s TerminalOne Marketing Operating System.

In addition to this, the MediaMath team working with eBay help the online retailer’s in-house team with any new campaigns they run for testing.