I think the job for eBay would just have to be finding an equilibrium: what is still worth to process and offer since there is quite a lot of work to be done to include large amounts of indirectly linked or almost hidden goods.

On one hand it is obvious: eBay includes everything that is directly related to the show and its stars. It will cover a lot, but on the other hand it is easy for a user to find that. Just browsing. For an app user that can not be much of an app can it?
And then there is the real product placement: items that are more difficult to define by a brand. That means finding something spectators find interesting, helping them to find it and purchase it. Doing real research for potential customers instead of them means working instead of them.

It can be done in a number of ways: from extremely restrictive selling of advertising space, to inserting endless lists of declared goods and offering millions of items. For the app user the two mentioned extremes represent the most useless examples: offering either too scarce and too obvious, or just too many barely connected options for them to handle. In either case the app is barely usful. However we are much further from the latter case. It is also notable that the latter case costs a great deal of work for the app editor. Therefore it is obvious why eBay started from the scarce end.

The development of the app should go in the direciton of including huge amounts of goods and organizing them. Very much the story of the www. Till then however it will have to be a constant struggle supported by measurment: finding the equilibrium what scarecity still makes sense to make an app useful under the condition of viable cost.

I agree, but it’s a huge challenge. eBay’s trying to get something out of this

Let’s say I like the shirt that a character wore in a movie. The goal would be to be able to find and buy that exact same shirt in the app, without having to search manually. That’d definitely be the best, and that could also be a new incentive for brands to make product placements.

Hopefully in the future we’ll have an app like that. Watch with Ebay definitely seems to be in the good path!