• by Laurie Sullivan , Yesterday

eBay is preparing to fend off a takeover bid from game retailer GameStop as it tries to focus on its agentic and advertising businesses.

The marketplace has shifted its strategy to focus heavily on agentic commerce, with the use of AI agents to handle shopping tasks such as discovery and price comparison.

It has invested in its own agentic platform to enable personalized, conversational shopping experiences, and in January it even blocked other agents from accessing its platform.

Earlier this year, eBay updated its user agreement to ban third-party AI agents -- specifically the type that buys for consumers using agentic commerce techniques and an attribution model.

Agentic services is part of the lure for GameStop. eBay, which had been quick to integrate AI chatbots and agentic agents, took steps last year to offer real-time, hyper-personalized services and shopping agents that support consumers at every point in the buying journey. 

GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen is reportedly driving the move to transform the traditional video game retailer into a diversified holding company focused on collectibles and digital platforms. 

eBay increased its push into advertising, live shopping, and AI-driven tools in recent years. The company generated $581 million in total advertising revenue during the past quarter, with $555 million coming from its own ad products. That's a 33% year-over-year increase.

Its ad strategy in 2026 shifted to a pay-to-play model primarily through major updates to attribution and ad placement that went live on January.

Promoted Listings for retail media now enable sellers to pay to boost their items' visibility in search results and across the web. Since January, two new payment options became available for extra exposure.

Expanded Halo Attribution, or eBay's "any-click" rule, charges sellers a fee if a someone clicks on an ad and that item is purchased within 30 days.

The Priority Campaign Strategy, previously called "Advanced," is pay-per-click, and since January 13, has exclusive access to the top search ad slot on eBay.

“Magical Listings,” eBay's AI feature, led to a surge of more than 50% in new listing rates. The company said its card-scanning tool, powered by AI, has now processed more than 30 million scans.

Cohen wants to turn GameStop into a holding company with a market value of $100 billion.

Achieving this could earn him up to $35 billion in stock compensation under a revised pay package, The Wall Street Journal reported.

"Part of the award starts vesting if GameStop’s market value reaches $20 billion and a measure of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization reaches $2 billion," according to the WSJ. "To get the full award, GameStop’s market value must reach $100 billion and the EBIDTA measure must reach $10 billion."

The move also aligns with GameStop’s aggressive push into high-end collectibles and trading cards -- a market where eBay is already a global leader.

GameStop has reportedly been "quietly building a stake" in eBay shares that could be submitted as early as late May 2026, Reuters reported.