Etsy will continue purchasing Google Product Listing Ads on behalf of merchants selling on Etsy, at least through the first half of the year, the company announced today.
Etsy is extending a three-month trial begun in October, in which the marketplace spent more than $250,000 to promote sellers through paid ads on Google Shopping. The company originally decided to invest in Google Shopping traffic to ensure merchants selling on Etsy didn’t lose business during the holiday season, after Google began charging to display product listings.
During the last three months of 2012, Google Product Listing Ads brought 14 million visits directly to Etsy listings, notes Frank Harris, a product manager, in a post on the Etsy news blog. Nearly a third of those visits were new visitors to Etsy, he adds.
“We are maintaining experiments with listing pages that are reached from Product Listing Ads to help new visitors discover additional items in which they may be interested,” Harris says. “As Google expands its services to other countries, we’re also committed to investigating Product Listing Ad opportunities for our international sellers to participate.”
Merchants selling on Etsy are automatically enrolled in the Google Product Listing Ads program, and there is no fee to participate. Sellers can opt out of the program.
