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Watch eBay’s new TV ad that fires a shot at the Amazon-ification of online shopping

EBay wants to be the place for what you want, not just what you need.

by Jason Del Rey
eBay’s 20th Anniversary Airstream Rolls Into San Francisco To Offer Shoppers Incredible $20 Deals Across Fashion, Tech And Home
eBay’s 20th Anniversary Airstream Rolls Into San Francisco To Offer Shoppers Incredible $20 Deals Across Fashion, Tech And Home
Kimberly White/Getty Images for eBay
Jason Del Rey
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.

In an online shopping world dominated by the ease and efficiency of Amazon, eBay is trying a different message to court shoppers: Fun.

The giant online marketplace is premiering a new TV ad on Sunday night during Game 2 of the NBA Finals aimed at painting eBay as a top destination for the things you want, rather than the things you simply need. It’s part of an overhaul of eBay’s messaging — down to its homepage — aimed at highlighting both the uniqueness and breadth of the eBay catalogue.

The 60-second ad, first published by Ad Age, kicks off inside an unremarkable warehouse with the question: “When did shopping get so beeeeeeeeeeeige?” The rest of the ad attempts to paint eBay as a vibrant counterpart to the Amazon-ification of e-commerce. Amazon generated nearly 14x the revenue of eBay in 2016, and that’s excluding the Amazon Web Services business.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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