Extreme oscillations in Etsy ads, and no real help from Etsy customer service

[SilverRavensMercCo]

Has anyone else noticed weird, extreme every-other-day oscillations in their Etsy ad views, spend and/or cost-per-click in the last couple of weeks? I’ve tried tweaking our ad spend, removing a couple of new or low-performing listings from our ads campaign, stopping and re-starting our ads campaign and sent multiple very long messages with lots of screenshots to an Etsy “Member Services” representative who provided essentially zero help and didn’t even seem to understand my issue or question. When I asked if there was someone else who might be able to help with my issue, they stopped responding to my messages.

Our shop has used Etsy ads on and off for a few years now, and has increased our daily budget over time as our production and packaging capacity has increased, and had some good success with ads. I mention this because I know the issue here is systematic or algorithmic, and not an issue of bad listings, buyers not clicking, SEO, blah, blah, blah, whatever the normal answers for new stores that don’t understand Etsy ads are. So I ask that you not respond to me with generic advice (like “don’t use Etsy ads”) or by quoting from the Etsy seller handbook like the Etsy “Member Services” rep seemed to be doing, back when they were still responding…

Additional details about this strange ads behavior:

On odd-numbered days from 5/19/24 to 5/29/24 we’ve maxed out our ads budget of $10 or $12 every day but one (that day was $0.13 under the max budget). On even-numbered days from 5/20/24 through 5/30/24 the amount of our ads budget used ranged from $0.26 to $1.05. (I switched our max ad budget from $10 to $12 for a few days to see if I could break the pattern, but it didn’t work. Neither did switching back to $10.) So, there is an every-other-day pattern here that has been going on for more than 10 days now. On odd-numbered days we spent 98.7-100% of our Etsy ads budget, and on even-numbered days we spent 2.6-8.75% of our budget. The extreme nature of these swings and the persistent nature of the every-other-day pattern over such a long time is primarily what indicates to me that this is a systemic or algorithmic issue. Especially because there are similar daily oscillations in our ad views and CPC and the daily pattern is the same. The overall pattern of all listings with ads is also similar to the individual listings’ ad behavior patterns. (More details/stats on this below.) Anyone who understands statistics should know or be able to tell you that the probability of an extreme pattern like this occurring naturally is very low and becomes increasingly improbable the longer the pattern persists. I waited about 10 days before contacting Etsy for help to make sure it wasn’t a fluke or something I could fix myself.

I will also mention these additional facts:

Our overall Etsy ads cost-per-click for 2024 YTD is about $0.21.

Our overall CPC for the last 24 months is about $0.22.

Our average CPC for odd-numbered days from 5/19/24 to 5/29/24 was about $0.24.

Our average CPC for even-numbered days from 5/20/24 to 5/30/24 was about $0.05.

Our most popular listing’s CPC for 2024 YTD is about $0.25.

This listing’s CPC for the last 24 months is about $0.24.

This listing’s CPC on odd-numbered days from 5/19/24 to 5/29/24 was about $0.30. (Total spend just over $7 in 6 days.)

This listing’s CPC for even-numbered days from 5/20/24 to 5/30/24 was about $0.05. (Total spend $0.43 in 6 days.)

And, to be clear, despite the average CPC of only $0.05, we still got 8 clicks and 1 purchase with a ROAS of 20.9 on these even-numbered days despite whatever seems to be suppressing our views, spend and CPC. This listing has more than 650 lifetime sales, about 180 ad orders, over $2,500 in ad revenue and its overall ratio of views to sales is roughly 6.5:1. So again, the problem here is pretty obviously NOT our listing quality, SEO, keywords, tags, people not clicking, people not buying, bots, direct traffic to our shop, or any of the other seemingly canned responses/explanations given to me by the very unhelpful Etsy “Member Services” representative.

If you’ve seen Etsy ads behaving like this now or in the past, were you able to resolve it? How?

Any other ideas on things to try?

I wish Etsy ads allowed more user controls.

[trendygiftzz]

I have also noticed a weird pattern emerging in my Etsy Ad spend. Take a look at this screenshot. Is this similar to what you’re noticing as well?

https://imgur.com/a/j89Wsmu

[SilverRavensMercCo]

Yes! This looks similar. At least it’s not just me…

[Adorabilities]

Etsy can charge you whatever they'd like for ads, so I'm not sure how customer service could help you. (Which is reason enough not to use them, in my opinion.)

You're not alone in noticing that click costs are bouncing back and forth from regular cost to 3x the cost, every other day.
See this thread:
https://community.etsy.com/t5/Marketing-Your-Business/Are-EtsyAds-a-true-auction-Or-are-bids-arbitra...

[Adorabilities]

Actually, it's surprising to see that your ad cost actually went down -- that hasn't been the case for the sellers in the other thread.

[SilverRavensMercCo]

Thanks! I searched around and didn’t find this thread.

[SistersWeddingFavors]

Hello,
I've been having this problem for 10 days. Etsy support team said they would investigate this issue and send me an e-mail, but I still haven't received the e-mail (it's been 4 days). I'm glad I'm not the only one, I hope they solve the problem faster with more complaints. My swings are $50 ad spend one day, and not even $1 the next day.

[DOKOcreations]

@SistersWeddingFavors  Please check out the thread @Adorabilities linked above. While this is clearly a problem for many shops, I believe it is a particular type of testing Etsy is running. So they won’t view it as a “problem” they need to solve, since I am fairly certain they are doing it on purpose for a certain length of time. And the Etsy support team is clueless as usual. They won’t even have been told about it.

[DragonflyDreams1]

Same issue. Two options as I see it. Either Etsy is testing, or they have too many shops buying ads so they are rotating to get the most exposure. People will only spend money on ads for so long if there are no results. It would be better for Etsy to find a way to get ad sales for all sellers who use them if possible, or the money source will decline.

[ForeverWindingWool]

I'm one of the few who recommends that shop owners don't enact Etsy ads until they get a firm grip on Etsy SEO and start making sales on their own. I believe that they can be useful if utilized properly. 

I normally use Ads in the summer when my items might slide down in search relevancy because of a lack of sales (wool can be hard to sell in June, July, and August). I've been here since '09, have a pretty good grip on Etsy SEO for my base customers, and know what search terms they use. I've used Etsy ads successfully on and off for years, but not this year. 

I don't spend more than $1 per day because so many of my items have a narrow profit margin. For example, I don't advertise any listings that, when sold, don't reap at least $5 in profit.   That eliminates a hefty bit.

I started ads three months ago in anticipation of the slower time. 
In March, I had two sales from ads, resulting in $15.25 in sales, and I spent $29.98 (125 clicks)
April had no sales from ads; I spent $20. (75 clicks)
May has had no sales from Etsy ads and cost me $10.98 (51 clicks)

In three months, Etsy has garnered 60.96 of my money, and (if the customer didn't get a 10% off coupon for returning after putting the items in their cart in March), I've gotten 7.62 profit MINUS Etsy fees. It's too early in the day for me to figure out what that actually leaves me. *sigh* Actually, I'm not sure I really want to, regardless of the time of day.

I deactivated Etsy ads and will enable them once the site traffic improves. 
I do not recommend Etsy ads anymore for anyone at any time. If Etsy isn't doing well, we won't either.

[SilverRavensMercCo]

I’m sorry Etsy ads haven’t been effective for you. We had 45 sales from Etsy ads in May with revenue of more than $1,000 from those orders. So, despite the weird fluctuations we were still doing well.

[Girlfriendnecklace]

Even with a great seo you may not be front page. Etsy caps the visibility all the time.

[Girlfriendnecklace]

Right now we can't control our audience with etsy. They based the ads on our keywords so we can't narrow them further down.

[TheCrownArts]

I have the same problem, but it seems also like every time I start using ads, I get tons of orders, and then it falls off until I STOP using ads and restart them. Is it possible Etsy is playing us? Aka boosting us when we first use ads so that we think they are effective? And then not prioritizing us once we're hooked?

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