Just sharing an observation. I’ve run Etsy ads for years - usually at least $30/day, up to $200/day during the holidays. Not all listings, maybe up to 50 (out of 400 or so). My ROI was always good, so it was worth it. Until the past few months where something changed and the return went straight into the gutter.
I read an informative post on Reddit last month and it made a lot of sense. The gist:
Etsy ad stats only show you how your ADS are doing.
Lots of shoppers skip the ad listings, since they don’t show the shop name and they view them as spam.
Ads often increase random clicks and lowers your conversion rate, which causes Etsy to push your listings lower (another big reason to never share your shop/listings in random Facebook groups - lots of clicks + no sales = lower search)
When we were on our trip I turned ads off. Put a vacation banner up, extended my ship dates by a week, put vacation stuff on all of my listings.
And had more sales while I was away than I’d had in any week in the prior few months.
I’ve left them off since our return, and I’m still getting sales - things are SLOW right now, and who knows if we’ll get back to 2020 numbers, but I don’t plan to turn ads back on anytime soon.
Mainly because I can’t tell and don’t want to investigate if the ads match my search filters. And I sometimes think to myself, that what makes a product on Etsy so bad that it needs ads?
I did them for awhile at a dollar a day. Most often I would get back the same I would spend. Thought maybe if I bumped it to two dollars a day I would at least outlast all the people who only spend a dollar a day. Didn’t work either. Most of my at is spent before the east coast even wakes up. Since I only sell a product that is for USA and Canada there is no way for me to not show my ads to people who can’t buy my products.
The old ad system was wonderful. I would make about $25 for every $1 I would spend.
Keep thinking they will maybe add or fix anything about it but I realize now it came out in 2019 and they haven’t done anything right with it.
But I can’t expect anything from a company that tries to sell me my own products in its emails and on my front page
IMHO, ever since Etsy revamped how their ads are handled it has not been personally super profitable. I use it at the start of the Christmas season just to get my items sales/exposure in hopes to elevate the sales rank. I do not really anticipate them being ACOS beneficial.
Etsy advertising was more predictable in the past when we could set our own CPC and buget. Nowadays its usefulness is best for new shops to get traction.
