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> 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 fr

> 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 shopper for at least 30 days to make this work.

mreome 7y ago
Well it seems Etsy will determine if a sale "will be attributed to Etsy’s advertising" so this tracking could be very basic and inaccurate, as long as it only generates false positive matches between a sale and an ad click-though.
gentleman11 7y ago
I used to think etsy was cute and fun, but if their tracking is that intense, and they treat their sellers like that... the warm and fuzzy feeling doesn't really stick around
- leeoniya 7y ago
  > I used to think etsy was cute and fun to the tune of ~$100M? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/etsy https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/etsy
  - skinnymuch 7y ago
    Etsy is a $6B public company now
    - leeoniya 7y ago
      my point is, they were never "cute", except maybe when it was just an idea in someone's garage and had near 0 brand recognition.
      - skinnymuch 7y ago
        Ah okay. I didn’t understand the point initially. Etsy raised high funds quickly, but until you raise many millions, I’d think you can still be considered cute. Etsy though raised $20M+ in a Series D 2.5 years after the initial seed round.
  - skinnymuch 7y ago
    Correction since I can’t edit the post from 1-2 days ago. Etsy shot back up and closing in on $7B market cap. Etsy’s low was in early 2018. At under a $1B market cap. It’s isn’t aimed as a response to OP. Just my own posting numbers.
Thorentis 7y ago
In this case though, it is to Etsy's advantage if the tracking is inaccurate, and generates a high false positive rate. I wonder what the data on incorrect tracking is (i.e. Does it lead to more false positives, or false negatives)?
- paxys 7y ago
  I imagine it will be pretty accurate, because if the user was using adblockers/tracking protection etc. they would likely not see the ad in the first place.
shostack 7y ago
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.

mreome 7y ago

Well it seems Etsy will determine if a sale "will be attributed to Etsy’s advertising" so this tracking could be very basic and inaccurate, as long as it only generates false positive matches between a sale and an ad click-though.

gentleman11 7y ago

I used to think etsy was cute and fun, but if their tracking is that intense, and they treat their sellers like that... the warm and fuzzy feeling doesn't really stick around

leeoniya 7y ago
> I used to think etsy was cute and fun to the tune of ~$100M? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/etsy https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/etsy
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  Etsy is a $6B public company now
  - leeoniya 7y ago
    my point is, they were never "cute", except maybe when it was just an idea in someone's garage and had near 0 brand recognition.
    - skinnymuch 7y ago
      Ah okay. I didn’t understand the point initially. Etsy raised high funds quickly, but until you raise many millions, I’d think you can still be considered cute. Etsy though raised $20M+ in a Series D 2.5 years after the initial seed round.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  Correction since I can’t edit the post from 1-2 days ago. Etsy shot back up and closing in on $7B market cap. Etsy’s low was in early 2018. At under a $1B market cap. It’s isn’t aimed as a response to OP. Just my own posting numbers.

Thorentis 7y ago

In this case though, it is to Etsy's advantage if the tracking is inaccurate, and generates a high false positive rate. I wonder what the data on incorrect tracking is (i.e. Does it lead to more false positives, or false negatives)?

paxys 7y ago
I imagine it will be pretty accurate, because if the user was using adblockers/tracking protection etc. they would likely not see the ad in the first place.

shostack 7y ago

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.