Concern About Suspicious Ad Click Activity Causing Huge Ad Spend Without Sales

[GoldHillJewelry]

Hello Etsy Community,

I’ve been a seller on Etsy for 6 years and have never experienced anything quite like this. Yesterday, I noticed one of my listings received 416 ad clicks, resulting in $802.60 in ad spend — with only 1 sale. That’s an average of nearly $2 per click, which is highly unusual and extremely concerning.

Here are the performance stats for the listing in question:

• Views: 6,434

• Clicks: 416

• CTR: 6.5%

• Orders: 1

• Revenue: $228

• Ad Spend: $802.60

• ROAS: 0.28

I’m starting to suspect that this might be intentional click fraud, possibly by a competitor or via some automated software designed to drain ad budgets. I’ve read in a few forums that this can happen, and I'm genuinely worried about the possibility.

My questions are:

1. Does Etsy charge ad fees for multiple clicks from the same IP or account within a short time frame?

2. What protection, if any, does Etsy have in place to prevent malicious or excessive clicking?

3. Has anyone else experienced unusual spikes in ad clicks without corresponding conversions?

This situation is causing financial harm to my business, and I’m very discouraged. I would greatly appreciate Etsy’s insight and the community’s experience on this matter.

Thank you for your time and support.

[TrinketDrawersUK]

Think you need to contact etsy, they have a policy in place for click fraud. Also if you have google analytics you may see a pattern. 

[Pyramidappareldesign]

Etsy is not interested in click fraud since it cannot be proven because the needed data is hidden by Etsy. During my advertising testing days, Etsy denied all my claims of click fraud by saying all the clicks info looks correct on their side and I sighed "of cause it looks right on your end, you have my money"

[Adorabilities]

You need to contact Etsy about this. Is your daily budget over $800? I would reduce it until this gets sorted out. 

[dayspringcollectible]

This is another good example of why not to use Etsy Ads.  As cheap as many of your items are, even without click fraud it would not take many clicks to spend more on ads than the entire cost of your item!

Personally, I would never use advertising that does not guarantee a sale.  On etsy, that would be Offsite Ads.  Pay-per-click ads are often just a money grab for the advertiser.

As others have said, Etsy tries to protect from misuse of the ads.  Contact them and bring this to their attention.

[PrevntProducts]

On the desktop dashboard try this:

Stats > Sort by Day > *Scroll Down* > Select "Direct and Other Traffic"

This will most likely give you an idea, of exact time and sources of this traffic.

This issue will not get corrected on it's own, I suggest pausing your ad budget and contacting Etsy Trust & Safety if possible

Best of luck

Make sure to screenshot, download, extract as much info as you can from here

Feel free to message w/ help interpreting this data, I've dealt with this click fraud in the past.

[PrevntProducts]

You will want to create a google analytics tag, and set that up on your Etsy shop as well

Best to have two methods to monitor traffic going forward (Etsy Dashboard & Google Analytics Dashboard)

Instructions for setting up google analytics tag (traffic tracking)

https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000337967-How-to-Use-Google-Analytics-for-Your-Etsy-Shop?...

[TrinketDrawersUK]

Also this might be of interest https://community.etsy.com/t5/Managing-Your-Shop/Invalid-Etsy-Ad-clicks/m-p/148609435#M1812727 

[SugarTaffySoap]

@GoldHillJewelry  Hopefully you'll get a "invalid Etsy ad click refund". I'm wondering how many sellers will be turning off their ads if this happens to them. 

[Pyramidappareldesign]

@GoldHillJewelry - invalid Etsy ad click refund"

I doubt such a thing exist as Etsy will fight hard to deny your claim. It's impossible to prove as Etsy hides all the relevant data.

[WeAreLunarium]

I've seen people posting about the 'invalid Etsy ad click refund'. So it does exist, just not sure what happened for them to be eligible.

[CatarinaBattista]

I would contact Etsy immediately. And turn off the Ads for a few days.

Also, I would never have such a high budget on my Ads, the consequences can be enormous as you see.

Good luck, I hope that you can fix this.

[WeAreLunarium]

I had this also, Etsy usually spent about $100 of my $1000 ad spend which I was getting a good return with. Suddenly in March it Was sending $300 a day with no ROAS. It was unusual so I spoke to Etsy chat about it but they just kept explaining to me how ads work, no matter how I tried to explain that it was unusual and seemed like a glitch they just explained ads again. I had to turn the ads off after a few days because I was hundreds of dollars in the red. Since then I've slowly been adding my add spend back on but my sales have taken a huge drop thanks to the glitch. I think they were messing around with ads in the background at the time because a few weeks later they rolled out a thing that said they changed how ads work slightly.. I guess it's just something I need to deal with and hope it doesn't happen again.

[CatarinaBattista]

It is very dangerous to have such a big budget for the Ads, it is like playing roulette, you played big, assume. Not because it goes wrong, that it is someone’s fault. Learn from it.

[PracticalPrintsByLee]

They've been various posts about the CPC going up the past few months i would have a look at them, personally if there not working for you and putting you in the red turn them off

[StitchRoundabout]

@cindylouwho2:  FYI.

Etsy will be able to see the IP address for each click, so it does not make sense that they would not take action if they notice fraudulent activity, especially when it's this obvious.  Surely, they would take action against that seller and then reimburse you for the ad clicks.

[cindylouwho2]

Etsy does refund sellers for ad fraud it detects. There was a thread just a few days ago. @GoldHillJewelry there are other possible reasons for a spike in views without sales, though. Check Google Analytics if you have it set up. 

@StitchRoundabout You are making an assumption that the IP address is the same, which will not always be the case. 

[Pyramidappareldesign]

Not in a million years! Etsy does not look out for click frauds and most claims are auto declined. Etsy holds the evidence and that's one rabbit hole they avoid on purpose.

According to Etsy:

NO DATA - NO CLICK FRAUD - JUST CUSTOMERS EXPLORING STUFF TO PURCHASE.

Case closed.

[cindylouwho2]

@Pyramidappareldesign yes, they do refund click fraud. I am sure they don't catch all of it but they do catch some. I've seen multiple refunds (even received one myself back when I still ran ads)

Not all high clicks with low sales are click fraud though. You need more evidence than that. 

[StitchRoundabout]

@cindylouwho2:  You said, "You are making an assumption that the IP address is the same, which will not always be the case."  If you mean that I was assuming that the clicks were from one person on one device, that's one scenario I was considering, but I was thinking of others too, such as one person using different devices in the same area, spam caused by bots or hackers that may be in the same area (which may or may not be detectable due to the sophistication of a lot of hacking attempts nowadays that mask the origin), or multiple people associated with a  competitor who were working together that may be in the same area.  In other words, perhaps Etsy could see a pattern associated with all the clicks to determine if they may be due to fraudulent activity.

[PowderBlueBijoux]

I just received a message from Etsy saying they had a glitch with ad charges on May 31-June 2 and June 9-June 13 and they were refunding me for them. I had never even noticed the glitch because I spend very little on ads and sometimes just shut them off all together because they just don't work for my shop. I find them way too expensive for what you get back.

[OhSoPrettyInPrint]

I just had this message too - haven’t had the refund though haha

[DavidandRau]

I have the same concerns as yourself.  I had to pump the brakes on the ads as they were approaching 1.85 per click.

[RusticsbySAM]

did yours start getting to $1.85 a click since around August/sept. 2024??? mine are now around that ever since then! used to be .40 to .60 the last 6 plus years! then bam!!! no explanation except the same BS lines they always give us! what is everyone else paying now?? anyone seen a drastic jump like that? from same timeframe?