The morphing of online and onsite auctions is underway with mobile bidding for auctions.
This post is written in conjunction with three other posts examining the best number of auction items for your live auction, silent auction, or online auction.
- How many silent auction items are best.
- How many live auction items are ideal.
- How many online auction items are good.
- Today’s post, sharing an observation about technology. (Specifically, mobile bidding for auctions.)
I’ve written posts about mobile bidding, but not on this topic.
This post gives one example of how mobile bidding is changing our perceptions and terminology.
In short, the line between the online auction and the onsite auction has blurred.
Assume my gala is Saturday night. Through the use of technology, I can open bidding for my auction items on any day I chose. Let’s say I opt for Monday morning.
Monday morning at 8 AM, I flip the switch (so to speak) in my auction program. Bidding opens. Bidders are invited to view my online catalog and bid on the items using whatever device they prefer — a laptop, phone, iPad, etc.
- If I close bidding on Friday night before my onsite event begins, we generally say it was an “online auction.”
- If I allow bidding to continue and close the auction sometime during my Saturday gala, we generally term it “a silent auction using mobile bidding.”
Did you get that?
To recap: On Tuesday, I had an online auction. But now — on Saturday night — it’s a silent auction using mobile bidding.
The terms changed. It’s a hybrid.
So when we’re talking about formulas that help us determine the best number of auction items for a silent auction, live auction, or online auction, all this becomes trickier. What type of a hybrid event are you running, anyway?
All food for thought.
Jeff Porter says
January 20, 2015 at 1:57 PMSherry – good point. We are often asked if we support online-only auctions or if our software only works onSite. We just tell them that it does both (I like your term: hybrid).
I can’t speak for our competitors but our software is designed to both seamlessly. That allows our customers to open their auction early and then when the live event date arrives, they simply put out some iPads for the non-smartphone users and keep doing what they are doing (no real transition necessary).
If (and that is a big IF) an organization has the ability to communicate and engage with their guests prior to the event, then opening the auction early can have some really impressive results. We discussed 2 case studies of that here: https://handbid.com/blog/5-things-that-can-improve-your-silent-auction-35-pre-bidding/
Sherry Truhlar says
January 20, 2015 at 2:47 PMThanks for the link to the blog posts, Jeff!
I like pre-bidding, too (that’s one of the advantages of mobile bidding, in my mind), though I’m hesitant to say it really increases the dollars raised. I agree with your other points, but I’m not even sure the data you provided really proves that the pre-bidding increases your overall take. A careful study examining ROI would do that, but my guess is that you don’t have a good ROI number simply because most schools are lax in putting in solid values to begin with. (E.G. How often do we see “priceless” on an item?)
I’m a bit of a stickler on numbers, only because I see numbers so often spinned. For instance, Bidding For Good (a vendor with a nice product) states on its website that “auctions that are open to the Bidder Community garner an average of 33% more bids. And more bids = more revenue for your organization.”
They might get 33% more bids; but more bids doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue!
For example, instead of using $250 increments during a live auction, I could use $1 increments. Imagine the thousands of bids I’d generate! Assume an item generally sells for $5000. Using $250 increments I reached the sale (at the most) in 20 bids. Using $1 increments, I reached the sale in 5000 bids. Sure, I generated ‘more bids,” but that has nothing to do with raising more money. In fact, one might say it’s just inefficient.
But whether it does or doesn’t generate more revenue, I do like (or don’t mind) pre-bidding. I probably should write something up on that myself as I’ve had some clients inquiring about that.
Thanks for weighing in!
(And by the way, just yesterday in a Facebook Auctioneers group the other day an auctioneer was asking about any mobile bidding vendors with apps, so I passed on your name.)
Jeff Porter says
January 22, 2015 at 9:25 AMWell thank you for passing on our info! Very much appreciated.
I see your point on the “more bids” doesn’t necessarily result in more revenue. However, we have observed in several instances that it does. To generate less revenue, you would have to hold to the assumption that people (or items) only get a certain number of bids on them and that people won’t bid more up to a target value (set in their head). I am working on a blog post to show some results of this and will send you a link to it when we are done. It is not scientific, but it is rather telling.
Also you are right about “priceless”. Our system doesn’t allow you to enter in a non-numerical value for an item. But we get comments all of the time that our customers want to put “priceless” as the value. That is a whole other topic on how to value items that we intend to address as well! Your comments on that in your live webinar this month were spot on there! Everything has a fair market value.
Talk soon!
Sherry Truhlar says
January 22, 2015 at 11:38 AMThanks for the update, Jeff! And I look forward to reading the posts!