Regretsy
With the exception, perhaps, of secondhand and digital-only sellers, pretty much no one with a storefront on Etsy feels good about the US tariff situation.
But Etsy itself might be able to fall back on its retail media business, Adweek suggests – provided, of course, that those shop owners are still willing to pay for ads.
Etsy’s ad business has two major sources of growth: promoted listings, which sellers can buy to highlight their products within Etsy’s own search, and off-site ads that appear on partner sites and via the Google Display Network.
Over the past three years, Etsy’s ad revenue grew steadily from $583 million in 2021 to $787.6 million last year. But the company’s recent focus on advertising has triggered backlash, too.
In 2020, Etsy started requiring high earners to participate in its off-site ads program, which added more fees that infuriated sellers. Two years later, it increased its transaction fee to “make significant investments in marketing,” which led to a weeklong strike and the creation of several alternative marketplaces and guilds.
So, Etsy’s leadership really should be asking themselves: If sellers can’t even afford their materials anymore, will they really shell out more money to a platform they already feel is nickel-and-diming them?
Defying X-pectations
Change is an inevitable facet of life. Lovers turn into exes, Twitters become X’s and … advertisements transform into subscriptions and AI partnerships? Apparently so.
As of February, X has seen a 30% year-over-year increase in revenue – which translates to $91 million – from data licensing and subscriptions, Ad Age reports. Advertising is also still growing, to be fair, but at a much slower rate of 4%.
It’s not all rainbows and butterflies, though. While $91 million might sound like a lot of money, it’s not quite so impressive when you’re up to your eyeballs in debt, owing a whopping $1.3 billion in interest alone.
Still, Musk is hopeful that tying xAI, his artificial intelligence startup, to X will impress investors with its market potential, as the platform works to reduce its debt – a load so massive it actually prevented lenders from even selling to investors until Musk paid some of it off.
Musk’s holding company, XAI Holdings, now owns both xAI and X. We’ll have to see if X’s revenue growth continues to hold, too.
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before
President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement happened in early April – as in, not during the first quarter. Yet investors are still dying to know if looming tariff turmoil impacted Q1 numbers.
For agency holding company WPP, the answer was a resounding “nope.”
During WPP’s earnings call on Friday, CEO Mark Read said that he doesn’t believe the holdco will see any tariff-induced changes in client spending until May this year.
Once all the market volatility really kicks in, though, it might end up being worse news for WPP compared to some of its competitors that haven’t been seeing their revenue decline as much in recent years.
During the first quarter of 2025, WPP’s revenue fell 5% year over year, and net sales dropped 2.7% – both of which were on par with the company’s expectations, at least.
“I don’t want to give the impression that we’re happy with these results – we’re not,” Read said, adding that GroupM, WPP’s media buying arm, didn’t perform as well as hoped in Q1.
Moving forward, WPP plans to strengthen GroupM (hopefully with the help of its new acquisition, Infosum) and win new business to overcome its recent poor performance.
But Wait! There’s More
Did publishers waste time playing in the privacy sandbox? [AdMonsters]
Now that third-party cookies aren’t crumbling, publishers need to figure out what to do with all their first-party data. [Dididay]
Confidence in the tech sector is dropping precipitously. [The Information]
Generative AI’s environmental impact still requires more research, according to a US government watchdog. [Mashable]
Everybody wants to buy Google Chrome right now. [The Verge]
You’re Hired!
Merkle adds David Novak as global CRM lead, Missy Foristall as COO (Americas), Dan Knauf as CTO (Americas) and Eric Buss as head of CX and commerce (Americas). [release]
