eBay Germany Looks For Enthusiast Buyer Boost With "Back Friday" Promotion
eBay is hoping for an Enthusiast Buyer boost in Germany with new "Back Friday" promotion encouraging selling unwanted personal items to fund Black Friday holiday shopping sprees.
The promotion gives private sellers the opportunity to win 1 of 5 €1,000 eBay shopping vouchers just be listing items for sale on the platform between October 24 and 31, 2025 (translation by Google.)
Conditions of participation:
- Clicking on “Participate now” on the campaign page.
- Listing an item as a private seller with registration on eBay.de between October 24, 2025 (00:00:00) and October 31, 2025 (23:59:59).
- Each additional item listed during the promotional period represents an additional entry for the competition. Each participant can collect a maximum of 25 entries during the entire promotional period.
- A maximum of one prize is possible per user.
Items listed must comply with applicable laws, eBay Terms and Conditions, and eBay Policies...
Prizes to be won:
- Each winner will receive five vouchers worth €200 (total value €1,000), redeemable at eBay.de for eligible purchases in accordance with the voucher terms and conditions. The vouchers can only be used once. If the full €200 is not used in a single purchase, the difference will be forfeited.
- The winners will be randomly selected (random generator) from all valid entries after the end of the participation period.
The terms of the promotion, and the way the €1,000 is split up into 5 separate fouchers of €200 each suggests this offer is intentionally set up to help move more buyers in the German market toward fulfilling criteria for eBay's all important Enthusiast Buyer statistic reported in quarterly earnings calls.
eBay defines "enthusiast buyers" as those who shop on eBay at least 6 times per year, spend at least $800 per year or those who also sell on the site.
The idea was originally cooked up as a way to counter concerns that overall Active Buyer stats have dropped significantly to below Q1 2018 levels.
By designating a subset of the buyer base as "high value enthusiast buyers" and showing growth in that segment, eBay was able to spin the story that overall active buyer losses were not important because they were mostly those who shopped infrequently or didn't spend much money while the truly "valuable" buyers were sticking around and even increasing.
And that worked, for a while in 2021-2022 when that segment was still growing on eBay with not insignificant help from the larger pandemic ecommerce boom.
But in Q4 2022, the number of "enthusiast buyers" dropped from ~17 Million to ~16 Million - which is where it has stayed since, including eBay's most recent Q2 2025 earnings report.
eBay leadership has been pulling out all the stops trying to reinvigorate Enthusiast Buyer growth over the last year, specifically focusing on what should be the easiest of the criteria to meet: buyers who also sell on the platform.
Importantly, that criteria could also be stated a different way as sellers who also buy on the platform - no matter which direction it goes, eBay is looking to activate the all important "flywheel effect" of having users who both buy and sell on the site.
In Q4 2024, eBay turned to legacy discounting tactics to try to boost this statistic, offering coupons to users in both the US and UK that were clearly targeted toward turning sellers into shoppers so they could be counted as "Enthusiast Buyers."
Liz Morton
But those discounts failed to move the needle as the Q4 earnings report showed Enthusiast Buyers was still stuck at ~16 Million.
eBay continued that same discount offer throughout Q1 2025 without success as Enthusiast Buyers remained stuck at ~16M in the Q1 report.
The company then desperately upped the ante in Q2 2025, giving them a coupon worth $50 instead of the previously offered $15 discount but requiring a purchase of $125+ to get it.
Liz Morton
Even that was not enough to move the needle as Q2 2025 earnings still reported Enthusiast Buyers at ~16 Million, but despite that, eBay has continued this same tactic throughout Q3 and into Q4 as well.
eBay has also been looking to boost adoption of it's livestream shopping platform by offering generous discounts to both buyers and sellers to incentivize using eBay Live in Q3 - but interestingly, this discount offer appeared to target the "purchases at least 6 times per year" criteria rather than the "buyers who also sell" criteria for Enthusiast Buyers.
Liz Morton
Similarly, the setup of this eBay Germany Back Friday promotion also seems geared toward those other criteria. Once the winner use their vouchers they'll check the box for spending over $800 in a year and since the prize is split into 5 different vouchers, that presumably would lead to 5 purchases, leaving only 1 purchase let to meet the 6 times per year criteria.
Of course with only 5 winners, that's not likely to impact the numbers alone, but getting more/new private sellers to list and sell and item on the site in hopes of winning could also help - if any one of those sellers has made at least 1 purchase in the last 12 months or will go on to make a purchase in the next 12 months, then they'll count as an "enthusiast buyer" too.
eBay doesn't break out the Enthusiast Buyer figure by criteria to show which one represents the largest share, but it will still be interesting to see if they finally manage to eke out any growth in that area when the company reports Q3 earnings October 29th.
