@typo_lee this subject always gets confusing because of changes eBay made in 2021. Many sites never adjusted or updated to reflect the new info, so there's a lot of outdated/incorrect data floating around if you just Google search trying to find how many active users eBay has.
Active Seller stats are not something eBay typically reports publicly in their quarterly earnings, but they did for a short time in 2021. At that time the numbers were:
Q1: 20 Million
Q 2: 19 Million
Q 3: 19 Million
Q4: 17 Million
eBay has not reported Active Seller stats publicly since Q4 2021, so anything you see claiming to have stats for after that is just someone's estimate/guess.
As for Active Buyers, eBay changed the definition of GMV back at the end of 2021, which also changed the definition of Active Buyer, and they restated figures for both going back to 2018 at that time.
Previously, GMV was defined as "the total value of all successfully closed transactions between users on our platforms during the period, regardless of whether the buyer and seller actually consummated the transaction."
In this context, consummated basically just meant paid - so every BIN checkout or auction with a winning bid was counted, even if the buyer never actually paid for the item.
That also meant that per the previous definition, active buyers and sellers were those who "successfully closed" a transaction on the platform in the previous 12 months - with closed again not necessarily meaning it was ever actually paid for or shipped.
At the end of 2021, the definition of GMV was changed to "the total value of all paid transactions on our platforms inclusive of shipping fees and taxes" and the definitions of Active Buyer and Seller were also changed to reflect that those stats only included people who participated in a paid transaction on the site within the last 12 months.
eBay changed and published the new/restated GMV and Active Buyer stats going back to 2018 to reflect what they would have been based on the new definition, but not everyone got the memo.
That has now created a very confusing situation where many websites that publish these stats have a mish mash of data, some of which is outdated or no longer accurate or at least not very helpful because depending on which data they are showing from when, it may not actually be an apples to apples comparison of numbers that were consistently measured using the same definitions.
Here's a chart showing the accurate restated numbers back to 2018, according to eBay's actual financial disclosures in quarterly reports filed with the SEC - which is the only direct, public source available for this data.
As of the most recent report in Q2 2024, eBay's Active Buyer statistics have been stalled at 132M for 5 quarters and they have now had 9 consequtive quarters with less buyers than in Q1 2018.
They haven't announced a date for the Q3 report yet, but it will likely be sometime in the next month or so.
@typo_lee wrote:My guess is those stalled 132 million buyers is an inflated figure. Our best years were 2020 and 2021 for obvious reasons (COVID) but that drop after is quite substantial and I think thats because people returned to the high street to shop and socialise with friends again post covid.
@typo_lee not sure what you mean by inflated figure?
It counts any account which paid for a transaction in the last 12 months, and on their quarterly filings they also note that some people may have more than one account.
It is mandatory for eBay to file these reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a publicly traded company and there would be serious fines, not to mention shareholder lawsuits, if they were caught materially misrepresenting their business performance or fudging the numbers, so while I know eBay likes to play fast and loose with statistics in many areas, I don't believe they'd likely risk SEC blowback by inflating the numbers in these reports, if that's what you meant.
