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Comment by tomnipotent | Hacker News Reader

Only on orders where the traffic is from this advertising service. Dishonest to make it sound like all orders are being dinged.

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On any sales within 30 days of an ad click. Genuine scenario from a few months ago: I'm looking at some shelving on Etsy, I mention it to my mother (using a specific seller's name) to double check it's right for what we need. She clicks the first Google result (which in this scenario could very easily be an Esty ad), and now Etsy are taking £12 extra from a £100 order without the seller being able to opt-out. For what? They haven't driven any traffic.

It's unlikely the Etsy ads will be targeting stores names, but generic terms they can match to their market place in real time.

It's far more likely in this scenario, there will be little confusion between the generic text ad and the first organic link that clearly has the seller's name in it.

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 no idea, but if she did, they're probably taking 12%.

> 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?

Why wouldn’t Etsy target popular individual store names? It’s a guaranteed financial win for them.

But how much current, organic traffic would this be hijacking?

How much traffic are seller's getting from Etsy itself? Should Etsy charge more for the traffic that they send to sellers that they wouldn't otherwise have?

Everyone wants to pretend that seller's are victims, but let's not pretend that any of them are any more loyal to Etsy than Etsy is to them. How many seller's are in multiple marketplaces? All of which charge much more than what Etsy has been charging for the amount of free traffic they're providing.

The marketplace market has evolved. You can sell your products on Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, NewEgg, Rakuten, and eBay at the same time. An entire industry of SaaS tools has evolved to manage this. Etsy has been way behind the in what they're charging sellers, and none of the seller's benefit if Etsy goes under.

This is what other marketplaces charge, for ALL orders. Providing the same service as Etsy.

Amazon: 6-20% (15% average)

NewEgg: 8-15%

Walmart: 6-15%

eBay: 10%+

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