Etsy just released its new advertising program, and it's an interesting one to analyze. Let's get this out of the way: I expect Shopify to watch this closely.

It's advertising without risk for a merchant, coupled with a success-based fee.

• opt-out for all but the top 10% of sellers. top 10% have to do it and will pay 12% for any sale driven.

• the fact that it is opt-out tells me a lot. This is not a test. Etsy is dependent and counting on this for its future growth.

• attribution is 30 day look-back only if the ad contained a seller's item. What does that say about landing pages with collections? Are they not in the program?

I do expect a lot of sellers to be happy with this eventually but they will resent the increased take rate. I would hasten to bet that the vast number of their sellers do not understand running Facebook and Google paid marketing campaigns. So it's hard for them to compare the alternative.

The chatter will be "Etsy grabbing more money." At least until it settles down.