2025 Global Marketplaces Report

Livestreaming, AI and pricing: sites edge closer to e-commerce

Report Highlights:

• Trends: AI pricing, livestreaming, ChatGPT shopper, transactions
• Companies: EBay, Vend Marketplaces, Gumtree U.K, Wallapop
• Companies to watch: Gumtree Australia and Adevinta Spain
• Top 50 sites: Vinted breaks into Top 5 as new global challenger

Transactions are no longer optional - they’re the future of marketplaces. Is your business positioned to lead, follow, or get left behind?

This year’s report digs deep into the forces reshaping the industry, from horizontals under pressure as specialists grab share, to the rapid evolution of secondhand marketplaces that have made transactions fast, seamless, and fully integrated.

We explore how agentic AI shoppers are poised to disrupt transactional sites, where consumers increasingly ask ChatGPT to find what they want - and retailer or marketplace widgets surface directly inside the conversation. At the same time, image-recognition technology is beginning to transform pricing in c-to-c marketplaces, bringing algorithmic discipline to categories that once relied on instinct and guesswork.

Livestreaming commerce, proven at scale in Asia, is expanding outward. For the right categories, livestreams boost trust, conversion, and engagement, and marketplaces everywhere are paying attention.

On the company front, we examine why eBay’s acquisition of Tise is widely viewed as a Gen Z play - and why some analysts see it as a necessary move for a mature e-commerce giant. We look at Gumtree U.K.’s long-awaited pivot to transactions, finally backed by an owner willing to modernize the horizontal model.

Elsewhere, Vend Marketplaces wrestles with growing transactional revenues while recommerce profitability remains elusive. Wallapop, meanwhile, is betting big on AI, as Naver signals its intent to unlock synergies through natural-language search and agentic systems.

Among the companies to watch, Adevinta Spain enters its next chapter as EQT prepares another swell-and-sell play, while Gumtree Australia goes solo - pushing harder on high-value verticals like cars, jobs, and real estate, and introducing transactions in general goods.

Inside the over 100-page report, you’ll find:

• Strategies and tactics of some of the most interesting and largest general marketplaces in the world
• Companies to watch
• Marketplace groups by revenue: The world’s Top 65
• Top 50 list identifies the largest general marketplace and classified sites worldwide
• The leading general marketplaces / classified companies in 67 countries
• And much more!

If you want to understand where marketplaces are heading - and what your competitors are already doing - this report is required reading.