eBay Snaps Up SalesPredict

When it comes to machine learning, you know what they say: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Then program your new thinking machines to contemplate beating them.  Then beat them.

Okay, maybe they don’t say that yet, but if eBay’s acquisition of SalesPredict really works out – who knows, they might start saying it.

SalesPredict is a start-up with a learning engine geared for commerce – it scans the history of what a shopper has bought to make suggestions about the next thing a shopper might want to buy. It is also a useful marketing tool that helps business leverage their marketing dollars at the right collection of consumers.

The read on why eBay bought SalesPredict seems to come down to Amazon and better competition with it.

“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,” noted Vice President and General Manager of Structured Data at eBay Amit Menipaz.

So eBay is boldly striding into territory that some have snarkily noted they probably should have been in some time before now – and making the world more contextual for its users.

“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,” said  SalesPredict Co-Founder and CEO Yaron Zakai-Or.