Wondering if Etsy Ads are still worth it in 2025? If you’re looking for ways to potentially increase your shop’s sales, these on-site ads may be able to help you. With some dedication, intention, and consistency, you can craft a campaign that aims to put your listings in the search results of interested shoppers. Here is eRank’s guide to making the most of your ad campaign.
How Etsy Ads Work in 2025
Etsy Ads place your relevant listings in shopper’s search results, using an auction system to select which products are advertised to shoppers. This system automatically creates a bid for each of your advertised listings. These listings then compete with other listings for an ad spot.
Where and how often your advertised listings appear in search results depend on the following factors.
Budget
For the most part, your budget determines how frequently the algorithm places your ads. You set your ad budget using your Etsy Ads dashboard, which is discussed in the next section. If you set your budget low, you may not see an increase of views and visits from your advertised listings. The higher your budget is, the more traffic your shop should get from ads.
However, please note that this is not guaranteed. Do you sell an item that doesn’t belong to a popular niche? If so, bringing in that extra traffic with ads may prove to be difficult. Also, always keep your available margin for ad spending in mind because you don’t want to spend more than your profit margin on an item and lose money. Read How to Calculate Your Etsy Shop’s Profit Margin Like a Pro to learn more.
Listing Quality Scores
Your listings’ quality scores also help determine how often your items are advertised. Listing Quality Scores are a metric Etsy doesn’t disclose. They are calculated using a variety of factors. We do know these include how often a listing is clicked, favorited, and leads to a purchase. Five-star reviews, compelling images, and SEO also impact an item’s ad placement. If your listing is performing well organically, it most likely has a good quality score.
Competition
The amount of competition your listings have also affects their ad placement. If there are many shops advertising items like or similar to yours, you may find it difficult to gain ad traffic.
💡 Use eRank’s Listing Audits tool to choose which products to advertise first. This report highlights the performance of the most recently updated listings in your shop. See each listing’s total views, total sales, and more. To make the most of your budget, eRank recommends starting off with advertising your top-performing listings.
How to Set Up Your Etsy Ads Campaign
Ready to test out Etsy Ads and see if they’re worth it for your shop? First, you’ll need to log into your Etsy seller account. Then, complete the following steps:
- At the top of the page, click the Shop Manager icon (located just to the left of your profile photo) to open your Etsy Shop Manager.
- In the main menu on the left side of the page, select “Marketing.”
- Select “Etsy Ads” from the dropdown menu.
- Scroll down to just below the graph and click “Manage your budget.”
- Here, you can set a daily budget for your ad campaign. Remember, you only pay when someone clicks one of your ads. This means that you probably won’t spend your entire budget every day.
Some sellers choose to start with a low daily budget, perhaps just a few dollars. They then increase their budget as needed—i.e., whenever they find that a) shoppers’ clicks are consistently “eating up” their budget and b) the majority of those clicks are converting into sales.
Other sellers choose to take a more aggressive approach to their ad budget. These sellers start off with a relatively high daily budget. Then, they figure out which of their advertised products have the highest conversion rates and remove listings from their campaign that are not performing as well (i.e., listings that are getting lots of clicks but no sales). This allows them to gradually scale back and streamline their budget.
💡 Use eRank’s ROI Calculator to evaluate the performance of your Etsy Ads campaign. This tool helps you better understand your Etsy Ads data. Assess how well your ads are performing and adjust your budget accordingly to achieve your sales goals.
How to Monitor Your Etsy Ads Campaign
Use the graph in your Etsy Shop Manager to see if your ads campaign is worth your budget. View your ads’ total views, total clicks, total orders, total revenue, and your total ad spend over time. This is especially useful while you are determining your budget and which listings you should advertise. Thereafter, review your ad stats once a month.
The data table below the graph provides detailed ad stats for each listing. Click “Detailed stats” under any listing’s image to view a graph for that listing. This graph displays the same types of data as the one on the previous page. Below, Etsy lists any targeted keywords for that advertised listing. It also shows you any orders that came from the ad.
💡Use eRank’s Listing Audit tool to inspect and revise advertised listings that aren’t selling. This tool performs a comprehensive audit of any listing. It shows you how well it complies with the guidelines in Etsy’s The Ultimate Guide to Etsy Search and Google Search Essentials.
Learn As You Go
You will likely have some mandatory trial and error in the beginning. However, you’ll soon find out whether or not Etsy Ads is worth it for your shop. Checking in on your campaign regularly helps you monitor which ads are consistently converting. You’ll also be able to see which ads are consistently wasting your budget. If you make a habit of removing listings from your ads that aren’t selling, you can optimize your campaign for success.
