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Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

mashable.com

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Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#161

Post by tomnipotent »

shostack wrote: post #112
tomnipotent wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And how do they get the traffic to retarget in the first place?

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#162

Post by tomnipotent »

shostack wrote: post #113
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.

What's important is how do you drive new business and traffic, which is an entirely different ball game than retargeting traffic you've already acquired.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#163

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

paxys wrote: post #48
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system has no opt-out if you've ever gone above $10K in rolling 12 month sales.

How many sellers are doing more business than that though? I figure Etsy has better numbers on that than we can speculate.

I'm not sure but the point is that it's WELL within the threshold of "mom n pop".

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#164

Post by gnicholas »

tomnipotent wrote: post #160
gnicholas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if that program leads to one sale more it only cost $500 - that's a pretty good ROI Not if you don’t have time to make another table...

Then reduce available inventory. No one is forcing you to sell things you don't want. This is a fake argument.

I think it’s an argument you don’t understand. Also, just because you sell tables for $5k doesn’t mean you would want to “buy” another sale for $500.

Just because the margin of sale price over COGS is high doesn’t mean that — after factoring in the cost of labor — it’s a high-margin endeavor.

Edit: typo fixed

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#165

Post by boh »

csomar wrote: post #91
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…

> I feel like we need some form of regulation That's crazy. Etsy is not the market, it is a market. If you don't like it, you move somewhere else. We already have too much regulation that for some fields it's impossible to start a business without jumping through many hoops. Last thing we need is to start regulating on a per-business basis. This is really a case of giving up your store brand/independence for convenie…

> We already have too much regulation that for some fields it's impossible to start a business without jumping through many hoops.

> If you don't like it, you move somewhere else

These two statements contradict each other. You're asking stakeholders to change their operating model in order to avoid Etsy having to do the same. This non-existing regulation potential impacting the practice of "starting a business" isn't a necessary argument. Stakeholders are resisting decisions that are negatively impacting their business--financial and tech firms do it all the time.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#166

Post by SllX »

otterley wrote: post #154
SllX wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever you think about creating a new “regulation”, by which I assume you mean a new law , try to think of what the phrasing for that law would be and then think about the enforcement mechanism, the implications of the law as written, and the possible, even probable complications from the enforcement mechanism. If you come up with something that isn’t going to unfairly penalize startups and small businesses, you mi…

All of this may be true, and yet, it’s not a very strong argument against regulation. I’m glad that we have safety regulations, despite objections such as yours, because they have demonstrably saved lives.

Lawmaking is an important part of a nation of laws, but that does not mean the body of law should have needless additions. This is why the process of selecting lawmakers is generally tied to a political process so that new laws are brokered and argued both for and against and modified.

The first test however for any new bill that would be law is, do we need this law? I think in cases where disputes are contractual or market-oriented, it is okay to rely on the resources of the State (the Courts specifically), especially if no other form of arbitration will resolve the dispute, but passing a new law should be a last resort and only after a case for it has been properly made, and a coalition around the new law formed.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#167

Post by WalterBright »

rcxdude wrote: post #107
WalterBright wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those companies are well aware that the worse they treat their companies, the more likely competitors will appear. It happens all the time. Big, unstoppable companies become sloppy and complacent, and suddenly find themselves in free fall.

Then another huge company grows out of the competitors and begins doing the same thing. Just because the company on top switches out occasionally (and during the transition there is a viable option which isn't abusive), doesn't mean the system is working.

People switching to another company means it works.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#168

Post by WalterBright »

jacknews wrote: post #118
WalterBright wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sears, Kodak, GE, etc.

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

They did the same thing as far as the customer was concerned, only better, thereby offering a better deal to customers, who switched.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#169

Post by epa »

reaperducer wrote: post #59
epa wrote: post #14

Its win win for store fronts.. prices will just go up to compensate.

It's not a win for the stores if they sell less because they had to increase prices. For some reason you assume that the stores don't already know their customers and haven't already maximized their prices.

Clearly they were getting free advertising subsidy, so maybe they don't fully know their costs.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#170

Post by josephjrobison »

blueboo wrote: post #109
josephjrobison wrote: post #17

Well the easy, non-controversial way to do this is to just introduce it as an easy and awesome new product, that stands on its own and let people opt-in at their own discretion. By auto-enrolling everybody and requiring them to opt-out, that’s creating a huge controversy just asking for backlash. And then forcing anyone who makes over $10k to now be required - that’s a strong hand they’re playing. Can only point to s…

Indeed. If the ads were effective and appealing, sellers would trip over themselves to sign up. If they're not, the only way to enroll would be this approach. Their strategy doesn't preclude the possibility of the former, but it sure signals the latter.

Exactly - they’re showing that Etsy is getting the upper hand here in an ad fee arbitrage play.
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