Dive Brief:
- Ebay is doubling down on its investments in AI-powered customer experience and employee productivity in the second second half of 2025, according to CEO Jamie Iannone during a Q2 2025 earnings call Wednesday.
- AI “continues to fundamentally change” Ebay’s customer experience for buyers and sellers alike by streamlining listing, improving the efficacy of search, improving inspiration and enhancing trust, Iannone said.
- The retailer is also investing in Ebay Live, a live shopping platform introduced in 2022. “It's a natural extension of our leadership in categories like trading cards, fashion and luxury goods, where trust, storytelling and scarcity are core to the purchase experience,” Iannone said during the call.
Dive Insight:
Ebay is focusing on AI’s ability to enhance personalization both during customer visits to the site and prior.
The company started using generative AI to personalize U.S. emails via its customer relationship management platform in late 2024, driving a 40% increase in quality visits, according to Iannone. The tool is now in use in the U.K., and Ebay is expanding AI-personalized emails to use cases including abandoned carts.
“We're already sending millions of these tailored emails each week and plan to continue leveraging generative AI to personalize more touch points of the customer experience through CRM channels,” Iannone said.
Agentic AI also represents a significant opportunity to improve personalization and relevance, according to Iannone. One example of the company’s investments is the conversational AI shopping agent Ebay rolled out to a small number of customers in May.
While agentic commerce is a small part of the business right now, “it has a nice growth rate,” Iannone said.
“So ultimately, we believe our scale, our unique inventory and our differentiated value proposition as well as accelerating our own AI capabilities position us extremely well to thrive in an agentic commerce future,” Iannone said during the call.
While agentic AI may play a larger role in shopping experiences in years to come, the technology still faces some hurdles. For instance, about 2 in 5 consumers say they have no trust in AI shopping assistants, according to a YouGov survey.
While AI is a major focus, Iannone described Ebay’s strategy as multipronged, and Ebay Live is another key element of its overall approach.
“By layering live commerce on top of our scaled marketplace, we're creating new shopping experiences where sellers can connect directly with their audience and like-minded buyers can engage with each other, all while leveraging the sellers, inventory and demand we already have,” Iannone said.
Ebay’s financial results for the second quarter of 2025 exceeded expectations, with revenue up 4% year over year on an FX-neutral basis to $2.7 billion, according to a company earnings report.
“These results are a testament to our continued progress in reinventing the future of e-commerce for enthusiasts,” Iannone said.
