Win or loose for eBay?
The other day eBay went out and acquired the biggest Danish classifieds service, DBA.dk, and it’s car counterpart Bilbasen.dk for 2,1 billion DKK.
I am not particular surprised about the move. In my view DBA.dk has long been a candidate for becoming part of something bigger in order to harvest synergies. But there are still some major question marks?
First of all, I think it’s interesting that no Nordic operator picked it up - that eBay was allowed to acquire it. Because if someone has muscle in this market, it’s eBay. And now they have the opportunity to get a foothold on the classifieds market in a way that should leave every single media exec from the older and bigger media companies trembling. It’s like letting in the fox in your hen house.
To me a more obvious acquirer would have been Schibsted or perhaps even MTG. But maybe they didn’t have the cash?
The second thing is that I’m curious to see whether eBay will be able to recoup it’s investment. I think it’s gutsy investing billions in an old business model, when Craiglist has shown everybody just how far you can get by reinventing this marketplace using a disruptive business model.
This is definately one to get back to.
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3 comments
You forgot to mention Bilinfo. I think they bought DBA primarily to get Bilinfo and BilBasen. It gives eBay direct access to the used car market and the insurance industry in Denmark, opening a new field. DBA is of course a strong brand, and they know something about print media, which we probably shouldn’t rule out yet, it could be back with a vengance…
You’re right. I forgot about Bilinfo. However I have a hard time seeing why it is that you would make such a big investment in such a local market? Would Bilinfo scale at all? Or should it? I’m just a bit baffled. Freesheets in print on the other hand containing classifieds only…hhmm…not sure about that one. Hard to keep current.
No, but it hints that eBay wanting to start selling other stuff, like insurance.
If they will build on the Bilinfo technology, I doubt that very much, it’s not exactly rocket science, but it could serve as an inspiration or showcase.
I’m _a bit_ surprised by the price-tag however, but not as much as I was by the Skype price-tag.
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