Digital Player: Gary Briggs

Name: Gary Briggs Title: Vp-consumer marketing, eBay Biggest industry challenge? "Balancing pay-for-performance [advertising] with branding. We're all about pay-for-performance, but for marketers that aren't predominantly online, it's more difficult." Biggest internal challenge? "Opening up eBay for natural search. We used to prevent Web crawlers from coming into eBay; we are now allowing them in on selected parts of the site. Also, trying to stay true to our roots as we grow bigger and bigger. " Marketing misses? "We [recently] did a rich media test with Eyeblaster on places including Yahoo!, MSN and Washington Post.com where we found that we were too intrusive." Learn anything new from recent conferences? "At iMedia [Brand Summit] I didn't feel that the ad sales people that were there had really grasped the current approach that ad buyers are taking. They were trapped in the past thinking that the world will go back to being a CPM world online. It's a hybrid model at best." How do you use the Web at home? "I have twin boys so we're on Lego.com a lot. I'm on [Apple's] iTunes [Music Store], Rhapsody and Napster. I want Napster to give iTunes a run for the money."

Digital Player: Gary Briggs

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