Marketplace sellers insights: A reality check

In this live session, Erik Pannekoek, Senior Growth Account Manager at ChannelEngine was joined by Millie Anderson from Spreetail to explore what is shaping ecommerce in 2025. Together, they broke down our latest Marketplace Seller Trends Report, discussed the strategies top performers use to scale sales, and looked ahead at the impact of AI and agentic commerce on the next era of online retail.

🎥 Missed the live session?

Here's the recording:

Best practices and key learnings

1. Map your marketplace footprint and maturity

During the webinar, we asked the audience, "How many marketplaces are you currently active on?" and the results closely matched what we found in the Marketplace Seller Report:

• A small portion were still on 1 or 2 marketplaces
• Many were on 5 or 6
• A significant group were already at 7+ channels
  
  

These poll results confirmed the same maturity curve we see across the broader market. Before you plan the next move, be clear on two things:

a. Which online marketplaces are you live on today?
List all your channels: global giants like Amazon and Walmart, local leaders like bol.com, and emerging players like Temu and TikTok Shop.

b. How do you operate on each one?
Are you using a seller, vendor, or a hybrid model? Are you managing via a marketplace integrator like ChannelEngine or handling everything manually or through custom feeds?

This clarity helps you decide if your next growth lever is:

• Optimizing existing channels for better profitability
• Expanding into new marketplaces or formats (social commerce, niche verticals)
• Or, most likely, a mix of both
  
  

2. Attack manual work with automation and data

The Marketplace Seller Trends Report shows that marketplace teams are still weighed down by manual tasks, including:

• Updating prices and promotions across multiple channels
• Fixing listing errors and missing attributes
• Managing returns and settlement files
• Manually pushing A+ content or rich media
  
  

During the webinar, Millie explained that Spreetail faced these same challenges - and their breakthrough came when they finally gained full visibility into listing health across channels. As she put it:

“Our biggest unlock wasn't a new marketplace; it was getting instant visibility into what’s live, what’s not, and why. Once you stop flying blind, you stop bleeding revenue.”

Millie Anderson
Channel Launch Project Manager

To overcome these bottlenecks, Spreetail focused on three core fixes:

• Clear ownership and tooling.
  Around 18 channel specialists focus on strategy and growth, supported by teams for listing operations, customer experience, and brand management.
  
  
• A real-time Power BI dashboard.
  Their Power BI view shows what’s live, what’s down, and the revenue impact so they can prioritize fast.
  
  
• Targeting the biggest blockers.
  Many deactivations come from a single missing attribute. With clear data, Spreetail can solve the root cause instead of firefighting.
  
  

For most sellers, the first automation wins usually come from:

• Using a marketplace integrator to standardize feeds and order flows
• Automating repricing within controlled floor and ceiling limits
• Building dashboards that track listing uptime, buy box share, and visibility
• Feeding return reasons back into product, packaging, and content updates
  
  

3. Use New Channels Wisely: Social Commerce And Live Video

The second big wave after classic marketplaces is social commerce. Millie Anderson shared insights from a TikTok conference:

• In the first 30 seconds of using TikTok, around 90 percent of users go straight to the search bar
• Younger shoppers are now searching TikTok before Google
• They want to see trusted creators using and explaining products
  
  

For brands and marketplaces sellers, this means:

• Video is now a core discovery format, not a nice-to-have
• Creator partnerships, sampling programs, and live shopping are high-leverage
• TikTok Shop and similar social commerce channels can drive both visibility and conversion
  
  

This shift aligns with a broader change in product discovery across marketplaces. We covered this in depth in our blog post "AI-Powered Product Discovery: How Social and GenAI Search Are Reshaping the Marketplace Funnel".

The challenge for most brands is operational:

• Who creates the video content
• How it scales across marketplaces and social platforms
• How insights from social performance feed back into marketplace listings
  
  

4. Prepare Now For Agentic Commerce And AI Shoppers

"We're now entering the third big wave of ecommerce. First came marketplaces, then social commerce, and the next one is agentic commerce. AI assistants will shape how products are found, compared, and recommended - so sellers need to prepare their data now."

Erik Pannekoek
Senior Growth Account Manager

Agentic commerce includes:

• AI assistants inside marketplaces that guide purchase decisions
• External agents such as ChatGPT and other AI tools that can: discover products, compare prices and features, and more
• Complete orders on the shopper's behalf
  
  

For most sellers, being ready for agentic commerce means:

• Structuring product data so AI systems can interpret it accurately
• Making content consistent, attribute-rich, and easy for AI to parse
• Thinking about SEO not just for people, but for AI agents that will read and rank your catalog
• The future is clear. Sellers will need to optimize for human shoppers and AI shoppers at the same time, and both rely on clean, structured, trustworthy product data.