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Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

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Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#111

Post by shostack »

AlexandrB wrote: post #5

> If a shopper clicks on an Etsy-funded ad featuring one of your listings on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Bing and makes one or more purchases from your shop within 30 days, those sales will be attributed to Etsy’s advertising and you’ll be charged an advertising fee on the total value of that order. This kind of stuff is why tracking is so pervasive. Etsy is relying on being able to uniquely track a s…

I'm in the digital media space. I'd really want to know more here about how Etsy is doing their media buying here.

As an advertiser, in general you need to watch out for things like cookie bombing where a network carpet bombs a large number of people as cheaply as possible in hopes of tagging your customers who would have bought any way and inflating their performance.

The other concern is retargeting. As an advertiser, I'm incentivized to run incrementality tests on things like retargeting that tends to cannibalize attribution of conversions. This helps ensure I'm not wasting impressions on people who would have purchased anyway.

From what you posted, it sounds like Etsy may actually have an incentive to explore these tactics because they control all the data, transparency on targeting and tracking, and what products they feature.

So in a hypothetical (not saying this is happening), if they need to dial up revenue, they could filter for high priced items that sell well on their own (regardless of the margins of the seller), retarget anyone they can who visited the seller's page before, and claim credit for people who may have bought without it.

All of that said, the percentage they are taking from this alone is not much and may not actually offset the media cost in all cases to deliver a positive ROAS. But I would be surprised if they haven't already tested this and run those numbers.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#112

Post by shostack »

tomnipotent wrote: post #87
stordoff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why they _couldn't_ - they specifically say "All of your listings or shops may be promoted". Even if they don't, it still falls into a similar trap. A few weeks prior (when I was still looking for cheaper alternatives), I mentioned off-hand that I've found one option, and it's on Etsy. Did she Google "[generic term] + Etsy" (I only found one seller, so it's tantamount to searching the seller's name)? I've…

> I don't see why they _couldn't_ It's not easy to automate, or to build a model that demonstrates that targeting this low-level will have a positive ROI. Advertising is a fickle game, and I don't see this being successful without building it on a broad program that allocates spend by some segmentation of their sales (e.g. product category).

Dynamic creative from a product feed setup to serve to a retargeting audience of people who visited those pages is not a terribly difficult ad task and certainly something Etsy is capable of doing from an engineering standpoint.

I'm not quite sure why you feel it isn't but I'd like to better understand your perspective.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#113

Post by shostack »

tomnipotent wrote: post #21

Etsy is buying advertising on other sites, to the benefit of their customers. In the event that traffic converts, they take another 12/15% on top of the existing 3-4%. This sounds like business the stores wouldn't be getting otherwise (so it's incremental), and all at the cost of what you'd be to an affiliate network anyway. Forced participation if you do more than $10,000 is ridiculous, but I otherwise fail to see w…

How does this guarantee it is incremental? What is to stop them from executing an extremely common e-commerce strategy of running a product feed to produce dynamic creative and retarget people who have already visited a store before?

There are other ways as well where it may not be incremental.

But without transparency and control of tracking and segmentation, users can't determine that at all.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#114

Post by massysett »

WalterBright wrote: post #106
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "all the time" you mean "once every couple of decades, often after antitrust intervention", then possibly.

Sears, Kodak, GE, etc.

Heck, even eBay. In the small-business-to-consumer market, it’s a shadow now compared to Amazon. Ok, at least Amazon does fulfillment so it’s not exactly comparable to ebay. But Etsy? There’s no reason eBay couldn’t be dominating that category. Didn’t take a couple of decades or antitrust intervention to destroy ebay.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#115

Post by massysett »

MicahKV wrote: post #78
benignslime wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you compared the price to say, hosting your own website, finding your own marketing platform, finding a payment provider, and managing logistical challenges, all for 12% of the gross income of your product? I can see why people would be frustrated, but you're getting a whole lot for using their service.

I do host my own website and manage all of those things, but it's not a question of the cost it's the fact that I can't opt out. It impairs my ability to predict & control my expenses, and it forces me to subsidize Etsy's ad campaigns that compete directly with my own website.

You can opt out: don’t sell on Etsy.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#116

Post by anonsivalley652 »

MicahKV wrote: post #43

I'm one of those sellers who is being forced into Etsy's new ad program. It is frustrating and obnoxious, but I can't say it is surprising given the policy changes they've been rolling out the past few months. It seems to me that online marketplaces like Etsy find their early success by bringing buyers and sellers together and just letting them do their thing, but as the marketplace becomes more established it's rela…

Two things: other platforms and your own store.

There's a lot of other sizable platforms these days. AliExpress, Jet, eBay, Banggood, Wish, Rakuten and more.

And, can you sell a selection of products on those various platforms as teasers to lure customers to more products on your own e-comm? This way, you capture more of the value than give it away to them. You would have to find a way to run your own site/app and do shipping, but that's the trade-offs.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#117

Post by Shivetya »

MicahKV wrote: post #43

I'm one of those sellers who is being forced into Etsy's new ad program. It is frustrating and obnoxious, but I can't say it is surprising given the policy changes they've been rolling out the past few months. It seems to me that online marketplaces like Etsy find their early success by bringing buyers and sellers together and just letting them do their thing, but as the marketplace becomes more established it's rela…

So I have to ask, why not move to ebay? Is their fee schedule worse than Etsy? I only buy from ebay and from the buyer perspective I enjoy the protections offered.

if Etsy wants to damage their brand than so be it. However there are multiple market places out there and this move by Etsy may be the push people need to look into them or start one.

edit: Found a comparison [0] spreadsheet for fees/etc, no comment from me on accuracy but it does show ebay as higher

[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z9PZDYLzlJe4fRgS85UX...

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#118

Post by jacknews »

WalterBright wrote: post #106
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "all the time" you mean "once every couple of decades, often after antitrust intervention", then possibly.

Sears, Kodak, GE, etc.

These were because technology changed, not because of better competitors doing the same thinig

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#119

Post by [deleted] »

MicahKV wrote: post #43

I'm one of those sellers who is being forced into Etsy's new ad program. It is frustrating and obnoxious, but I can't say it is surprising given the policy changes they've been rolling out the past few months. It seems to me that online marketplaces like Etsy find their early success by bringing buyers and sellers together and just letting them do their thing, but as the marketplace becomes more established it's rela…

[deleted]
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