eBay Inc. has announced the acquisition of an Israeli startup called SalesPredict, which uses advanced analytics to predict consumer’s buying behavior. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but various media reports put the deal in the $20-30 million region.

Once the acquisition has been completed, an undisclosed number of SalesPredict staff will join eBay’s structured data organization, an initiative aimed at using data to improve the listings on its site. Yaron Zakai-Or, CEO and Co-founder of SalesPredict, will take over as Director of Product Management & Technology, while Kira Radinsky, CTO and Co-founder, will become eBay Israel’s new Director of Data Science and Chief Scientist.

eBay’s structured data initiative has three main components – namely; collecting data; processing and enriching that data; and creating product experiences. This means that sellers on eBay are required to provide more data about their products, and enhance their content with better descriptions and more images. Doing so, eBay reckons it will be able to make life easier for sellers by simplifying its inventories, improving search, and better product targeting. eBay recently acquired Swedish AI firm Expertmaker to bolster this initiative, and today’s acquisition is similarly designed.

SalesPredict provides a software solution for B2B companies that helps them to increase revenues by identifying who their best potential prospects are, and by providing insights that can help to boost conversion rates and accelerate sales cycles. eBay is hoping to take that skillset and apply it to its own site to boost conversion rates through better targeting of customers.

eBay is rapidly building out its machine-learning capabilities in order to clean up and streamline its vast catalog of products. The site currently boasts some 900 million listings, and SalesPredict will help the company to better determine why those listings are sold at certain price ranges.

SalesPredict’s predictive analytics capabilities will improve the experience for both buyers and sellers on eBay. For buyers, it means more targeted and relevant offers, while helping eBay to better understand the price differentiating attributes of each product. Meanwhile for sellers, eBay says it will be able to “build out the predictive models that can define the probability of selling a single product, at a given price over time”.

Before the acquisition, SalesPredict had raised $5.1 million in venture capital funds from investors including Yandex, KGC Capital, RSL Venture Partners, and others.

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