Recently the New York Times had an article about fake items being sold on eBay and how eBay is handling these problems, which was very interesting, and especially of interest to us, as we increasingly focus on how to regulate our marketplace. We are often compared to eBay, as we both have online marketplaces – essentially facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers.  However, the article also includes some important features about eBay that help to highlight differences between Right Media and eBay.  

In the article, eBay maintains that it has expertise only about the marketplace, “‘We never take possession of the goods sold through eBay, and we don’t have any expertise,’ said Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman. ‘We’re not clothing experts. We’re not car experts, and we’re not jewelry experts. We’re experts at building a marketplace and bringing buyers and sellers together.’”*  Right Media, on the other hand, is responsible for the creatives, the goods that are at the center of the transactions in the marketplace, and we are experts in our marketplace content - online advertising. 

To better understand Right Media’s focus on regulating our marketplace, as opposed to the more laissez-faire attitude of eBay, it is important to underline another difference in how the two marketplace technologies handle the transactions.  eBay facilitates the transaction between buyer and seller, but is not involved with the item in a transaction - they do not decide what items a buyer bids on, what amount buyers bid, or transfer the item between the two parties. 

Yield Manager, however, is directly involved in each transaction between an advertiser and a publisher, acting as a proxy for the two parties in every transaction - determining the price bid by an advertiser, which bids a publisher should consider (for example a publisher who sets their profile to not accept creatives with adult content, would not see bids from those creatives), and serves the creative to a site.  The advertisers and publishers do not personally select which individual creatives will be shown to the impression or where that impression will occur. 

Because of our level of involvement in marketplace transactions, we realize that it is incumbent upon us to make sure that all of the creatives and the publisher sites are properly classified, in order to protect our clients’ interests.  Currently, much of this classification has been self-reported by publishers and advertisers, with an additional check by Right Media for certain types of creatives and content, and until recently this has worked well.  However, as we have an increasing number of users and transactions, there have unfortunately been more incorrect or dishonest self-reported content descriptions - essentially the same as the fraud on eBay.  We are well aware that we need to tackle these issues and are applying our industry expertise to formulate the best way to protect everyone’s interests in the Yield Manager Marketplace.

* Katie Hafner, “Seeing Fakes, Angry Traders Confront EBay,” New York Times, January 29, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com

This entry was posted on Friday, February 3rd, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Right Media Exchange, Network Media Exchange. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.