Reports have emerged to suggest that eBay (News - Alert) is looking to take a page from the Amazon playbook and offer up its huge stockpile of shopping data to brands so that said brands can better build on individual audiences. While information about this idea has made it into the field previously, it's done so on a very limited basis, until a buyer who eBay recently pitched to stepped up to fill in some of the gaps.

According to the buyer in question – reportedly the SVP of media at Los Angeles' Ignited agency –eBay has a massive quantity of data, including shopper segments for people looking for specific things on the site. Advertisers can in turn take that data and target non-eBay sites with very specific advertising matter. The reports indicate that eBay's data isn't as well organized as that of Amazon, but in terms of raw data amounts, eBay is a match for Amazon.

But by like token, eBay's ad targeting systems are comparatively untested, and there are plenty of parties skeptical of such a move in the first place. Even some executives at eBay reportedly have a problem with making the jump to advertising technology, but eBay has been quietly building its advertising initiatives for years going back to 2005, when it bought Shopping.com (now the eBay Commerce Network) and followed that up with 2011's purchase of GSI Commerce (News - Alert), going after advice from several industry figures. Also, eBay recently hired Glenn Fishback to serve as SVP of digital media services and strategy for GSI Commerce back in August.

The big question on a lot of advertisers' minds, meanwhile, is that while eBay's stockpile of advertising data is potent stuff, just how useful will it be? eBay shoppers tend to show up looking for bargains, and that may somewhat tarnish the value of these shoppers in advertisers' minds. Why pitch to people who are most sensitive to price?

Yet at the same time, eBay shoppers are often showing up for deals that can't be had anywhere else. No one's going to Amazon looking for an autographed baseball card for a certain player. Shoppers aren't on the hunt for a used boat or car there, either, and these are just some examples of holes that Amazon's data has in it, the kind of holes eBay can step up and fill. But will niche advertising opportunities be enough to propel eBay's information to usefulness?

There's certainly quite a bit of potential for eBay's information to take off in the advertiser market. eBay knows many of the same things that Amazon does, and at the same time, also knows a few things Amazon doesn't, in much the same way that Amazon knows things eBay doesn't. Only time will tell if the market will embrace eBay's data as having a fresh perspective, or reject it as more of the same.