The past five years have seen an explosion in online marketplaces around the world, including in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (the DACH region). The area’s five largest marketplaces have grown by 11 percent a year since 2019—even faster than the rapid rise in overall retail e-commerce spending catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic.1 To date, Switzerland’s marketplace segment has been growing rapidly, catching up with international platforms that are more mature, in part because consumer preferences shift more slowly in Switzerland than in other nations. For example, Swiss consumers are less likely to prefer online marketplaces over single-merchant online stores than consumers in other DACH countries (20 percent compared with about 35 percent in Germany and Austria),2 despite exhibiting the highest growth in spending on marketplaces during the period.
Our analysis, drawing on a wealth of primary research and benchmarking tools (see sidebar “Our methodology”), suggests that the online marketplace segment in Switzerland is primed to accelerate in the next five years (Exhibit 1).
Growth prospects for three key marketplaces
Marketplaces offer a broad array of goods and services, from job openings on generalist classified sites to niche, hyperspecialized platforms (see sidebar “Third-party online marketplaces”). For example, high-value verticals have emerged in property and vehicle sales, where matching supply and demand can be challenging because of low purchase frequency and geographically distributed buyers and sellers. However, a growing opportunity exists to capitalize on the interaction between marketplaces (that is, through traffic and listings) to generate a supply-and-demand flywheel that benefits both horizontal and vertical models.
We conducted a detailed assessment of three of Switzerland’s professionalized, high-traffic platforms: third-party general marketplaces for new and secondhand goods, real estate classified platforms, and automotive classified platforms. These account for most of the country’s third-party marketplace activity.
General marketplaces
General marketplaces—third-party consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplaces—act like social networks: Because more than 90 percent of their sales are secondhand items between consumers,3 brand awareness among the population leads C2C sellers to list their used items on a given online marketplace. The payoff is the promise of high engagement from prospective buyers, which then generates higher user traffic from buyers looking for an intuitive, efficient platform with a wide range of items. While focused on consumer sales, general marketplaces can also serve as an alternative channel for professional e-commerce businesses looking to reach a broad audience. These platforms have experienced overall growth in transactions of about 15 percent a year from 2019 to 2021, as measured by the gross merchandise value of secondhand items sold online (Exhibit 2). This increase was fueled partly by consumers spending time at home during the pandemic, clearing out their belongings from attics and basements.
The results from our 2025 survey of Swiss consumers indicate that the average Swiss household has about 4,000 Swiss francs’ worth of idle items (considerably more than the average German household with 3,000 Swiss francs’ worth of idle items, according to eBay), equating to about 16 billion Swiss francs for the whole country. Notably, more than half of survey respondents cited the hassle or time investment as reasons they have not sold their items so far—clearly indicating a need for increased automation (such as AI-enabled listing tools) to make platforms more intuitive and to unlock the potential opportunity of secondhand items.
Buying used. Switzerland’s general marketplaces are expected to grow at a robust 3 percent a year through 2029, largely stemming from the continued shift to online platforms to buy and sell goods (both new and used). Since 2018, Switzerland’s e-commerce segment has outpaced those of its DACH peers (8 percent growth a year versus less than 5 percent for Austria and Germany), and its share of online transactions as a share of gross merchandise value is set to surpass that of Germany (Exhibit 3).4 This potential, combined with other digital indicators, suggests continued growth in e-commerce.
According to McKinsey analysis, Switzerland’s online spending on used goods is projected to grow at 4 percent annually, slightly trailing the broader retail e-commerce segment. This is due to growth in the number of consumers buying used goods, countered with international e-tailers slightly eroding used-goods’ share of wallet. These companies offer attractively priced alternatives to used goods, bringing a flood of new, imported products to the market.
However, e-tailers are likely to be less competitive in Switzerland than in other countries; Swiss consumers have lower price sensitivity and a stronger preference for product quality and sustainability (56 percent of survey respondents regularly buy used goods online, among the highest in Europe). Furthermore, structural factors such as import duties and regulations on international businesses operating in Switzerland make it more difficult for international entrants to gain a strong foothold in the country. Marketplaces may also benefit from the emerging popularity of “recommerce” (retailers selling returned or unsold goods on third-party marketplaces), although it remains unclear what share of the approximately one billion Swiss francs’ worth of unsold or resold goods is listed on these platforms, according to McKinsey analysis.
Know the top players. Switzerland has five competing third-party marketplace archetypes, with varying value chain coverage and monetization methods. The two most common archetypes are classified platforms (such as Anibis and Tutti) and social commerce sites (such as Facebook Marketplace), and the latter offers little added functionality (for example, integrated payment systems) beyond connecting prospective buyers with sellers.
The more sophisticated transactional marketplaces (for example, Etsy and Ricardo) and the long tail of specialized vertical marketplaces (such as Chrono24) charge the seller a share of an item’s sale price in exchange for an end-to-end offering that integrates payments and value-added services such as shipping, logistics, and goods protection. For example, eBay in the United States charges a seller “success fee” of 3 to 15 percent of each item’s final sale price, while eBay in Switzerland and Ricardo, the main transactional platforms in Switzerland, levy commissions of 2 to 11 percent and 8 to 12 percent (with Ricardo capped at 290 Swiss francs), respectively. Last, integrated recommerce players, such as Digitec Galaxus, compete with transactional platforms by offering a third-party marketplace for secondhand and refurbished goods alongside their primary first-party marketplace.
Our research suggests platforms that can provide an end-to-end transaction journey may also be able to tap into the most valuable monetization lever going forward: services. We forecast this lever to be valued at approximately 65 million Swiss francs by 2029, up from 24 million Swiss francs in 2024. Both buyers and sellers report an increased propensity to use these services in the future.
Much like social networks, platforms can differentiate themselves along several dimensions: efficiency, scale of inventory, strong brand perception, scale of traffic and listings, and convenience for users, supported by value-added functionalities and distinctive user interface and experience (UI/UX). These dimensions ultimately create a self-reinforcing flywheel: High traffic from potential sellers results in a greater diversity of listings, and this variety attracts more buyers, leading to increased engagement and transaction conversions. In turn, this volume of activity motivates even more sellers to list their items. Enhanced services and data-led customer insights further improve the matchmaking process, enabling smooth transactions and a best-in-class customer experience, perpetuating the cycle. Across international markets, most leading C2C marketplaces engage more than 400 unique visitors a month per 1,000 inhabitants. For reference, Germany’s Kleinanzeigen had 462 unique visitors per 1,000 inhabitants in February 2025, and Italy’s Subito had 309. Switzerland’s Ricardo had 309, equivalent to 2.9 million users across its website and app.5 Millions of active listings reinforce these C2C marketplaces’ high consumer engagement.
Our survey confirms that transaction-based marketplaces (such as Ricardo) benefit from elevated awareness and high satisfaction rates among respondents. For instance, Ricardo’s customer recommendation score is more than 15 percentage points higher than that of the average classified platform in Switzerland. These marketplaces also perform substantially better on the most important purchasing criteria for consumers: listing quality, UI/UX, quality of buyers and sellers, and protection for buyers and sellers. Transaction-based marketplaces achieve these higher results because their end-to-end ownership of the transaction process increases usage, especially for sellers in the most valuable product categories, such as electronics and watches. Even classified sites such as Anibis and Tutti, which don’t own the transaction process, have differentiated by prioritizing protection and customer experience. As a result, in our survey, consumers reported they would sell more than 55 percent of the value of their idle goods on Ricardo, Tutti, or Anibis.
Despite offering limited coverage of the value chain, social commerce sites such as Facebook Marketplace have emerged as the main competitors to established marketplace players because of their free-to-list model for sellers (much like classified platforms) and high awareness among survey respondents. However, these sites may be limited by a declining user base: For example, although Facebook Marketplace’s user base grew to an average of 600,000 monthly web and app users in 2024, it remains approximately five times smaller than Ricardo’s. Furthermore, monthly active Swiss users on Facebook itself have declined by nearly 50 percent since 2017, with 2.0 million in 2024 compared with 3.9 million in 2017.6 Moreover, across generations of consumers, transactional marketplaces enjoy a ten-percentage-point advantage in customer recommendation scores, on average, compared with social commerce sites, according to our survey of Swiss consumers. Even Gen Z survey respondents show a preference for transactional models over social commerce sites (28 percent to 21 percent, respectively). This sentiment suggests that Swiss consumers value the protection that transactional platforms provide, even with the additional commission fees.
Real estate
Professional agents are the primary paying customers for real estate online classifieds. Through a monthly subscription, agents can advertise their properties to a much larger audience than on their own website. Some classified sites also integrate with agency back-office software, providing customer relationship management and listing management solutions. Our analysis suggests the total addressable opportunity for real estate classifieds in Switzerland is sizable—approximately 450 million Swiss francs in 2024. Furthermore, segments consist of 350 million Swiss francs in marketing spending from approximately 5,250 real estate agencies, 45 million Swiss francs in agent software spending, and 50 million Swiss francs from private sellers (and, to a lesser extent, tenant search subscription services).
We estimate that the agency marketing portion could reach more than 500 million Swiss francs over the next five years. The relatively low penetration of online classifieds in agents’ marketing budgets (40 percent) represents a growth opportunity (Exhibit 4). Opportunities could include tapping into new value-adding services, such as “seller leads,” like those in Germany and other real estate classified markets. Real estate online classifieds captured just 3 percent of Switzerland’s agent commission pool in 2024 (worth 4.5 billion Swiss francs) compared with 7 percent on average for other classified sites across Europe. The commission pool’s high value results from elevated sale and rental prices—one million Swiss francs and 28,000 Swiss francs a year for sale and rental prices, respectively, compared with the rest of Europe at 300,000 Swiss francs and 11,000 Swiss francs.
The Swiss real estate online-classifieds market appears primed to increase by about 8 percent a year through 2029, driven by growth in the underlying property transaction market and an uptick in agency marketing spending. Online classifieds’ share of this market is also expected to rise significantly, from 40 percent in 2024 to 51 percent in 2029 (Exhibit 5).
The real estate transaction market. Following a challenging 2020–22 period, the real estate transaction market in Switzerland is expected to grow at about 5 percent annually through 2029 (Exhibit 6). Residential sales account for more than 90 percent of the annual real estate market by value. Historically low transaction volumes in 2022 resulted from low supply in the housing market, exacerbated by elevated interest rates and construction rates of less than 1.5 percent of stock a year since 2012.7 However, the Swiss market has rebounded more quickly than other European markets, thanks to rapid rate cuts to near zero by the start of 2025 (0.5 percent versus 2.5 percent set by the European Central Bank),8 especially in urban areas, where demand was also affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Transaction volumes are expected to recover in the coming years, thanks to an increased supply of properties for sale. For example, McKinsey analysis suggests that an additional 20,000 homes could come to market annually until 2045 (representing more than a fifth of current sale supply), in part from baby boomer homeowners selling or passing on their homes to relatives (share of homeownership among people aged 60 and older is more than 50 percent, versus about 20 percent for those aged 20 to 60).9 In our interviews with experts, they suggest that the share of sales intermediation by agents should be relatively stable, at about 85 percent of transactions, with agent commission of about 3 percent of the sale price.
Similar to the sales market, real estate agents and property managers play a critical role in facilitating 80 percent of rental transactions, more than double the share in France.10 Moreover, about 57 percent of households in Switzerland rent their primary residence,11 the highest share in Europe, underscoring the significance of the country’s rental market to online classifieds. Rental prices climbed 5 percent from 2022 to 2024 on the strength of continued demand from tenant households due to high migration and decreasing affordability of properties for sale.12 Our research suggests that demand will likely continue to outstrip supply over the next five years. To capitalize on this dynamic, some online-classifieds sites have begun to offer premium search subscriptions to give prospective tenants early access to high-quality rental properties. This segment currently represents a small but accelerating part of the addressable market (projected growth of 43 percent a year through 2029): Our consumer survey found that more than one-third of current tenants indicate that they are likely to subscribe to support their next property search, up from the 6 percent today.
Growing marketing spending allocated to classifieds. According to our research, Swiss agents underspend on marketing as a share of their commission pool, compared with international peers, because Switzerland has a relatively valuable commission pool (0.6 percent of national GDP versus 0.1 to 0.4 percent for most benchmarked countries) and a tight underlying real estate market. Swiss real estate agents are projected to increase their marketing spending from 8 percent of commission revenue to 9 percent by 2029, bringing them closer to average international benchmarks of around 11 percent.13
Online classifieds are expected to be the fastest-growing segment of spending for real estate agency marketing in Switzerland, growing about 13 percent annually for the next five years, with agents increasing their budget allocation by nearly 11 percentage points by 2029 (Exhibit 7). The primary reason for this increase seems to be cost efficiency: More than 90 percent of real estate agents responding to our survey selected online classifieds as their most effective marketing channel, above even investing in their own websites. Therefore, agents are motivated to boost the share of their properties listed on classifieds. A small but growing share of agents are looking to these sites for inventory sourcing—a feature that allows platforms to sell leads to agencies by connecting them with consumers who intend to sell or lease their property in the near future.
Our survey of agents found that social media is the only other marketing channel in which agents expect to increase their marketing spending in the future. These sites are typically used to increase brand awareness, with the long-term aim of gaining new inventory from prospective vendors. However, experts suggest that the efficacy of this channel is difficult to measure given the cumulative nature of building brand awareness; conversely, online classifieds typically offer direct leads.
The online-classifieds landscape. Competitors in online classifieds for real estate adopt two different strategies: pure play or aggregation (see sidebar “Players in real estate online classifieds”). A pureplay model (such as Homegate, ImmoScout24, Newhome, or Immobilier) enables agents to list properties directly on the site in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. An aggregator model (such as Comparis or Properstar) compiles property listings from agency and classified sites on a single comparison site. Aggregators often have more listings than pure players, but the majority of aggregators’ listings are typically “scraped” from pure-play classifieds or agency websites.
Online-classifieds sites can differentiate themselves by performing well across three pillars:
- providing an excellent agent experience by generating a high volume of leads and offering additional services
- giving customers an equally positive experience through an easy-to-use website or app and a broad coverage of listings
- operating an effective business model, using positive brand perception among buyers and sellers to reduce the costs of customer acquisition
These pillars all contribute to ROI by attracting property listings, thereby increasing supply on platforms and driving higher demand and traffic from consumers.
Without online-classifieds platforms, agents report, closing a sale would take 25 days longer (on top of an average of two to four months to sell a property), and sale prices would drop 6 percent. This popularity translates directly into property listings: Both ImmoScout24 and Homegate hosted about 65,000 residential properties for sale or rent in January 2025, which almost matches the volume on aggregator platforms—for example, Comparis had 80,000 for the same period, though its scraped-listing volumes fluctuate significantly—and was about three times higher than the next pure-play competitors, Immobilier and Newhome.
High consumer traffic from potential buyers and tenants also drives lead generation and therefore sales for agents. For example, ImmoScout24 and Homegate had an average of about 3.6 million and 3.8 million monthly web visits in 2024, respectively, corresponding to a cumulative traffic advantage of about six times over Newhome (1.3 million visitors per month) and more than seven times over Immobilier (0.9 million).14
The benefits of high traffic translate into improved cost effectiveness. For instance, our agent survey found that ImmoScout24 and Homegate offer agents a cost per lead that is roughly three to four times lower than other closest providers. The healthy supply of properties from agents and abundant consumer demand on ImmoScout24 and Homegate help deliver a quality experience for buyers and agents.
Specifically, ImmoScout24 and Homegate have agent recommendation deltas of positive four and positive 20 when compared with other classified sites. More than half of buyers found the property they eventually bought on one of these sites, which offer a relatively easy, straightforward search process. By comparison, just 12 percent found their properties directly through an agent.
Automotive
Professional dealerships play a crucial role in Switzerland’s used-car market. In our interviews, experts estimated that more than 80 percent of used-car transactions in the country occurred via one of the country’s 5,200 dealerships in 2024, a significantly higher share than in Germany (65 percent) or the United Kingdom (60 percent). This high share stems from a preference among Swiss consumers for quality and security. The total addressable opportunity for classifieds in Switzerland’s used-car market is substantial—approximately 150 million Swiss francs in 2024, with spending on dealer marketing making up for about 85 percent of the value pool, versus 15 percent by private sellers, according to McKinsey analysis.
This dynamic creates a compelling opportunity in the automotive online-classifieds space. The Swiss dealership landscape remains relatively fragmented compared with European markets, creating potential for online classifieds to supplant traditional and less effective marketing channels as they become more professional. According to McKinsey analysis, in more-consolidated dealer markets, such as the United Kingdom, a larger proportion of gross profit is typically dedicated to online advertising for used cars, particularly to online classifieds. One other factor is lower used-car prices in Germany (18,000 Swiss francs) and the United Kingdom (21,000 Swiss francs) compared with Switzerland (31,000 Swiss francs). Consequently, automotive online-classifieds sites capture an average of just 3 percent of a dealer’s gross profit pool in Switzerland (meaning dealers can cover this annual spending with about four sales), in contrast with Germany’s 6 percent and the United Kingdom’s 7 percent (Exhibit 8).
According to dealers, this addressable market is expected to grow at about 6 percent a year through 2029, despite the stable growth of the used-car market after 2024 (Exhibit 9).
The automotive transaction market. From 2019 to 2022, used-car prices rose 6 percent annually as supply chain disruption from semiconductor shortages and COVID-19 limited the volume of new cars and spurred demand for used cars. New-car sales fell from 311,000 transactions in 2019 to 226,000 in 2022, with used-car imports growing by 50 percent to supplement the car market during this period.15 This meant that used transaction volumes remained relatively stable, with the market value climbing to about 32 billion Swiss francs in 2024, according to McKinsey analysis. Following the stabilization of new vehicle supply (239,000 transactions in 2024 and growing 2 percent a year through 2029),16 the used-vehicle market is expected to grow at 3 percent a year through 2029, with the holding period of Swiss cars falling from 6.5 years in 2022 to the long-term average of 6.0 years by 2029, according to McKinsey analysis. Dealers expect to spend more on marketing as a share of gross profit in order to shift vehicle stock from parking lots to customer driveways.
Growing dealer spending on online classifieds. The online-classifieds segment is expected to continue to outpace the addressable market, with forecast growth of 12 percent a year over the next five years. Contributing factors include a marginal increase in dealer marketing budgets—which are currently at 6 percent of gross profit, while gross profit margins remain stable at 8 percent17—and the allocation of a higher share of marketing budgets to online classifieds (Exhibit 10). This pattern will likely displace spending on offline channels: Dealers currently allocate an average of 13 percent of marketing budgets to offline advertising, a figure that reaches up to 18 percent for small to medium-size dealerships.18 Dealer respondents to our survey make it clear that classifieds platforms are becoming not only the largest channel for vehicle advertising but also the fastest growing.
This potential is further reinforced by the relative immaturity of Switzerland’s online-classifieds market compared with international benchmarks. German and UK dealers currently spend 57 and 70 percent of their marketing budgets, respectively, on online classifieds. This higher spending reflects the depth of additional services provided by platforms in these more mature markets, such as inventory sourcing (for example, consumer-to-business auction technology) and listing-visibility tools. Significant spending growth is now expected in the Swiss market, where dealers plan to increase their marketing allocation to online classifieds by 13 percentage points from 2024 to 2029. Almost a third of dealers have cited those additional services as the primary driver of their spending increases.19
The online-classifieds landscape. Both professional and private sellers use a variety of marketing channels to advertise their used cars, though online classifieds are one of the most effective avenues for reaching buyers. More than 99 percent of dealers surveyed indicated they have used at least one online-classifieds site in the past 24 months. They indicated that without such sites, it would take 18 days longer to sell a vehicle (on top of the average sale time of one to two months) and result in a 5 percent price drop. The primary vehicle marketplaces are classified pure players (such as Autolina, AutoScout24, and Carmarket) and aggregator sites (led by Comparis and AutoUncle).
As we did with real estate sites, we also identified success factors for auto online classifieds. Leading platforms excel in three ways:
- offering a superior dealer experience by generating high-quality leads from prospective buyers
- providing a positive customer experience through a user-friendly website or app with a wide range of listings for customers
- maintaining an effective business model and brand
This focus on lead quality reflects the fact that dealerships typically receive a high volume of “junk” leads, elevating the value of marketing channels that effectively deliver leads that convert to vehicle sales.
More than 60 percent of dealers say these platforms are cost-effective or very cost-effective, while only 27 percent said the same for other marketing channels.20 Indeed, dealers perceive the marketing cost per sale through leading classified sites to be less than one-third of that for offline advertising and dealers’ own websites.
This greater return on investment from online classifieds speaks to the high volume of interested buyers browsing these sites’ vast inventories. According to Semrush, almost two million unique visitors a month in 2024 searched through AutoScout24’s 160,000 live listings (as of February 2025); more than 125,000 unique users a month visited Autolina in 2024. When comparing buyer usage across channels, AutoScout24 and Comparis lead on awareness, with 92 and 56 percent of consumers, respectively, recognizing these platforms.21 However, while Comparis has relatively high awareness among more than half of vehicle buyers, only 7 percent of buyers actually find their new car on this site, compared with more than 80 percent on AutoScout24.22 This gap highlights the role that aggregator platforms play in generating engagement at the top of the buyer awareness funnel before they divert traffic to pureplay platforms to generate tangible leads from prospective buyers—and ultimately profits.
AutoScout24 is the leader in this pure-play space, with more than twice the number of listings and 14 times the number of unique visitors compared with its closest Swiss competitors. Our survey of automotive dealers found that this volume generates a cost per lead that is estimated to be about 50 percent lower than Autolina and 40 percent lower than Carmarket, stemming from a fourfold advantage in leads per listing. Fifty-one percent of dealers and 70 percent buyers report that they would therefore choose AutoScout24 over other platforms if required, reflecting their preference for advertising efficiency and listing depth. Similarly, the platform’s customer recommendation score is 31 points higher, on average, than its closest pure-play competitors.
The ability of Swiss online-classifieds platforms to achieve their full market potential remains uncertain. Nevertheless, we anticipate that marketplaces will continue to be a key growth area in Swiss digital marketing and commerce, particularly as generalist third-party marketplaces continue to expand their professional merchant offerings through recommerce and additional services opportunities. Real estate and automotive marketplaces can count on ever-increasing listing volumes to spur professional sellers to allocate a growing share of their marketing and software budgets to this channel, leading to more consumers going online for their next big purchase.
Some international marketplace companies have sought to reinforce this demand-and-supply flywheel by combining multiple vertical and horizontal platforms, including trade services or job classifieds. Our research suggests that the companies that build a network of marketplaces, regardless of branding consistency, can enhance this flywheel effect, increasing economic value for platform providers and consumers alike.
