Earnings Labs

Etsy, Inc. (ETSY)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 26, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Cheryl, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Etsy Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the call over to Deb Wasser, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Debra Wasser

Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Etsy's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are Josh Silverman, CEO; Rachel Glaser, CFO; and Gabe Ratcliff, our Senior Manager of Investor Relations. Before we get started, just a reminder that our remarks today include forward-looking statements relating to our financial guidance and key drivers thereof, anticipated product launches, our ability to bring buyers back to the Etsy marketplace, anticipated continued benefits of our migration to the cloud, anticipated benefit of our marketing strategy, anticipated investments in the timing and benefits of our seller initiatives and the strategic benefit and impact on our financial performance of our acquisition of Reverb. Our actual results may differ materially. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which are described in our press release, our 10-Q filed with the SEC on October 31, 2019, and our 2019 10-K that we expect to file with the SEC in the coming days. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on our beliefs and assumptions today, and we don't have any obligation to update them. Also during the call, we'll present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release, which you can find on our Investor Relations website. The length of the replay of this call will also be available there, and if you prefer to access the replay via phone, you can find that information in the press release as well. We've created a slide presentation to accompany today's remarks and recommend you follow along. With that, I'll turn the call over to Josh.

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Thanks, Deb, and good afternoon, everyone. We believe Etsy is uniquely positioned to address a huge market opportunity. Last March, we described that opportunity and laid out our long-term strategy to capitalize on it, underpinned by our marketing, product and technology road map, which deepened our powerful rights to win, giving us the confidence to sign up to ambitious growth targets through 2023. We're off to a really strong start with our 2019 performance. At our Investor Day last March, we targeted a 5-year GMS growth CAGR of 16% to 20%, faster than e-commerce averages. And in the first year, our core Etsy marketplace delivered GMS growth of 20.4%, above the high end of the targeted range. We also said we expect revenue to grow slightly faster than GMS over that 5-year period, and in 2019, the core Etsy marketplace delivered revenue growth of 32%, significantly higher than GMS. Last August, we also completed the acquisition of Reverb, another very special marketplace, driving even more growth. Our full year GMS grew nearly 27%, and revenue grew almost 36% on a consolidated basis. And we had a very strong finish to the year. Etsy reported fourth quarter consolidated GMS up 33% to $1.7 billion, revenue up 35% to $270 million and consolidated adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 23%. The core Etsy marketplace delivered strong growth with fourth quarter GMS up 20% year-over-year, revenue up 28% and our take rate reached 17.2%, all up from the high bar set in the prior year. We're proud to be one of the handful of companies simultaneously delivering very strong top line growth and EBITDA margins north of 20%. You've probably heard of the Rule of 40. It's an elite club. And heck, in 2019, we were Rule of 50. 2019 was a big year,…

Rachel Glaser

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Thanks, Josh. My commentary today will cover consolidated results as well as key drivers of performance, which include Etsy marketplace results where appropriate. You can find further details on Reverb's contributions in our press release and soon to be filed 10-K. On a consolidated basis, Etsy's fourth quarter GMS grew 33% to $1.7 billion. Revenue grew 35% to $270 million, and we delivered adjusted EBITDA of nearly $55 million, finishing a strong year where we delivered profitable growth while leveraging investments in products, technology and marketing. Etsy marketplace GMS growth in the fourth quarter on a constant currency basis was 19.7%. And for full year 2019, we accelerated GMS nearly 100 basis points to 21.3% compared to last year. On a 2-year basis, the GMS CAGR in the Etsy marketplace has been greater than 20% for 3 consecutive quarters. Etsy had an especially strong holiday season, lapping a very strong Q4 last year. Revenue for the core Etsy marketplace grew 28.4% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, and our take rate expanded 10 basis points sequentially to 17.2%, driven by growth in both marketplace and services revenue. In particular, we reported strong growth in advertising revenue related to Etsy Ads, primarily driven by Promoted Listings. Promoted Listings revenue has increased 30% or more for 10 consecutive quarters. Google Shopping contributed approximately $13 million to advertising revenue for the quarter but with 0 margin as it carries an equal offset in cost of revenue. Operating metrics for the Etsy marketplace continued to show signs of improvement throughout the year. For example, we made significant progress driving frequency on the platform. Etsy's GMS per active buyer on a trailing 12-month basis grew 3.8% year-over-year; and on a 2-year stacked basis, increased by over 6%, the highest ever increase in this metric since we've…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from Edward Yruma of KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Edward Yruma

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Congratulations on a great quarter. Lots to unpack here. I guess first on Etsy Ads. I know one of the thought processes behind the legacy product was that you'd be able to pull back on SCM and spend more to top of funnel. I know that's part of the objective with the retool program, but help us understand. Do you think that you'll fund all of the SCM marketing today using the 15% you're charging in the new program? Or are you still expecting to kick some in as well?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Yes, great question. So the overall philosophy remains the same. That overall, sellers will take on primary funding for advertising their individual listing off-site, and that will allow Etsy to invest more in upper funnel things that only Etsy can do, like advertising the Etsy brand on TV or getting people to download the app or driving people to the homepage. In terms of the structure of the off-site advertising program in particular, we do anticipate that there will continue to be some subsidy of Etsy to the program. So the 15% and 12% fee will cover much, but not all, of the cost. And for example, if somebody clicks on a listing and doesn't buy, there's cost in that, and Etsy might absorb better that. And if they land on one seller's page and they end up buying from another seller. Those are things. But we think that, that's appropriate because if you think about it, it's the case that the seller makes an incremental sale, which is great and gets a happy customer that they might be able to resell to. But Etsy also has gained a customer. And so the idea that we are chipping in together with sellers to make this a great program, we think, is important. And we're really proud of this program. I do want to say that a 6% to 8% ROAS, we think, relative to what sellers would get if they had their own stand-alone shop is a really strong ROAS, and we take on the risk that the money they invest might not convert to a sale. And that's exactly the kind of thing that a platform can do, is pool the resources of the sellers together to deliver something that they each individually could never get on their own. So we're excited about this. We think it does deliver great value for sellers, and we think it's going to be really good for Etsy.

Edward Yruma

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Great. And one follow-up, if I may. You hinted at some innovations or some work you're doing around Promoted Listings, or I guess, what you're now calling Etsy Ads. And then also we've obviously been impressed that you've grown as strong as you have over the past 10 quarters. I guess with these innovations, do you think it's likely that you continue the 30%-type growth trajectory? Or are you starting to hit the ceiling from an availability perspective?

Rachel Glaser

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Thanks, Ed. So we're not going to give specific guidance on how much we think Promoted Listings will continue to grow. It's a really strong, one might call it, a workhorse product for our sellers. They love the product. And we've been able to improve - continue to improve the efficacy of it for them by making the Promoted Listings terms more and more relevant so that the - even though they're promoted ads, they're very relevant to the search query. And so that gets them a better ROI because they're getting more clicks from the placement of their ad. And we have - Josh has referenced to continuing to innovate would be that because we're investing in machine learning and our search engineering team to continue to make those results higher - more and more valuable and higher and higher ROI.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Kunal Madhukar of Deutsche Bank.

Kunal Madhukar

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

A quick clarification, Josh, on what you just said, the 6 to 8x ROAS. And you also said that the money they invest may not convert into a sale, that's a risk. So does that mean that the seller will pay for the click and the traffic, regardless of whether there is a sale? Or will they still have to pay - or will they not pay if there is no sale?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Thanks for that question. It's a really important clarification. No, the seller will only pay if they make a sale for Offsite Ads, and we think that's really important. What we heard from sellers is that they're really nervous to put their money upfront for Offsite Ads, where they just don't know the intent of a buyer who's on Google or Facebook or other places. And so Etsy is taking on that risk for them and sort of pooling that risk, if you will. So they will only pay the 12% or 15% fee when the click converts to a sale.

Kunal Madhukar

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Okay. Great. And then on the Promoted Listing side, I wanted to understand how that growth has kind of trended in the fourth quarter. And you mentioned that there was like only modest churn - or actually no churn in - modest churn in the sellers as far as Promoted Listing is concerned. What did you hear from them in terms of their experience with Etsy Ads that led you to go in and come up with this new Etsy Offsite Ads program?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Great. So let me start with churn. It's the case that, in any given month, there will be some level of churn in the program. There's just natural. It's a very dynamic market. We've got sellers coming in and sellers coming out. What I would say is that we did not see a material increase in churn through the fourth quarter, and so churn did not materially change, and budgets went up. So we think that the program in that way was successful, and yet we are responsive to what we hear from sellers. And what we heard was that a limitation to them continuing to enter the program and grow their budget was this fear that they're going to spend money upfront and not have it convert to a sale. And not just a fear, I mean, that's a reality for sellers that some of them will invest money and have it not converted to a sale. And so when we looked at that and said, at the pace we want to scale this program, not something that's going to limit us, this is a very reasonable concern that sellers have. And we, as a platform, are positioned to take that on. So we think this is kind of an innovative program, but we think it's a great example of innovating to meet the needs of sellers in a way that's a real win-win for Etsy as well.

Kunal Madhukar

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Great. And a quick one, if I could squeeze this. There has been increasing concern about the impact of - or the potential impact of coronavirus and if it could impact supply chain and product availability. As you think of the products that are available on Etsy, what do you think is the estimate on like the original raw material might have emerged from China, which could potentially disrupt - what percentage of the GMV do you think that could potentially disrupt if there is a disruption?

Rachel Glaser

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

So a very, very small percentage of both our supply and our demand is in China, where the majority of coronavirus has been sighted. We obviously keep a very close watch on all of this, and we think there's no impact to Etsy at this point. In fact, when you think about the responses that some of the CDC and others have talked about, which is remote - ability to work remotely if needed, we have most - probably one of the largest remote workforces in the world when you think about our sellers being - already working from their homes. So they're uniquely set up to continue business as usual. Of course, any macro - major macro trend that happens, I think Etsy would be subjected to the waves of that as well. But thus far, we haven't seen any impact to our business.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Shweta Khajuria of RBC Capital Markets.

Shweta Khajuria

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

Great. Let me try two, please. First, on the guidance, Rachel, for 2020. Could you help us understand or give some direction on how much you're thinking the Reverb contributions is for the full year? And then on the - and the second question is on EBITDA margins for 2020. Give some - can you help with modeling for where you expect leverage and deleverage? Help us understand what the puts and takes are with Reverb, with the cloud expenses, with Etsy Ads, with the Offsite product. There are quite a few things moving around, and some of them likely are onetime that can potentially allow for greater margin expansion in 2021 and beyond. So there are a few moving pieces, I want to make sure it's clarified.

Rachel Glaser

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

Yes. So for starters, we did say - to give you some sense of how much Etsy's stand-alone business is growing in 2020, we said that - we believe that Etsy on a stand-alone basis will grow in line with our long-term guidance that we gave at our Investor Day of 16% to 20% for GMS. And we were very specific on take rate as well. So we said take rates will be about 17.5% for Etsy on a stand-alone basis for - on average for the full year. So that sort of helps you with the revenue and GMS for the Etsy stand-alone basis. And I think you've got enough data to figure out back into Reverb's GMS from that and Reverb's take rate can be applied to develop their revenue. We've also said that Reverb's EBITDA is going to be breakeven as we exit 2020. So there is some headwind on EBITDA margins coming from Reverb. The other headwinds to margin, we did go into some detail on which things would gain leverage on in 2020 and which things would delever. So because of the Etsy Ads movement in all of Q1 and a portion of Q2, we have basically the old accounting treatment for Etsy Ads, which would be revenue with a corresponding equal amount of cost of revenue, so it's dilutive to margins. But going forward, it would actually be incremental marketing expense that would show up in Etsy's marketing line. And because of that, we think we'll see a little bit of deleverage in the marketing line, but accretive to EBITDA margins and EBITDA dollars. Product development, we said might be modestly dilutive to our EBITDA margins because we are investing there, and we're also capitalizing less of our labor. We're also taking a fair amount of the incremental revenue we expect from the new format at the ads, and reinvesting that as we did when we did our pricing change last year in upper funnel marketing and back into our business to continue to do product development. So we think both the marketing line and the product development line will have a small - a modest amount of deleverage, but we're going to gain leverage in cost of revenue because of the change to Etsy Ads and in our G&A function.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Nick Jones of Citi.

Nicholas Jones

Analyst · Citi

One on the Offsite Ads. I think I read on a blog and the seller handbook that every seller would be opted into this. Is there any color you can give around what you think kind of the roll-off will be? And how we should think about how that would touch - circle throughout the year from launch to when sellers may decide to opt out for this product?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · Citi

Yes. So I'd start by saying we always start with what do we think is in sellers' best interest. And when we look at the program, we think generally, at large, this is going to be a great program for most sellers. But when we spent time with sellers - and we spend a lot of time with them and try to know them pretty well. Sellers that are relatively small, maybe early in their life cycle or for whom this is something they don't dedicate a ton of time to, sometimes tell us, and this might be a little counterintuitive, but that they really don't want to grow more than a certain size. And so they actually may not want incremental sales. And that's true of some sellers. And by the time they hit about $10,000 of annualized sales, they've sort of demonstrated a scale and well and desire to be growing. And so the threshold where we said under $10,000, you have the ability to opt out of the program because we've seen some sellers who've said that growth is actually something that they're not necessarily ready for. By the time they've hit $10,000, we see that growth is something they're typically ready for. It's something they're typically wanting. And frankly, the program works better when they're all in it together. We have more data and more ability to work together with partners like Google and Facebook and others to really scale that program. So it lifts up the whole program to have all of the larger sellers in the program. So we allow for an opt out for sellers under $10,000, and they have a 15% fee. For sellers over $10,000, they have a 12% fee, but they don't have the ability to opt out. And we think that opt out rates for sellers under $10,000 will be very manageable. We're not sure what they'll be, but it will be manageable for the program.

Rachel Glaser

Analyst · Citi

And I'll just add a comment because we have a room set up for the announcement day where we have a very robust cross-functional team monitoring forum. Our member support organization has been ready to take calls and respond to e-mails immediately. And the - so I've been spending time with them there today, and the overall tone and tenor has been, we've been very pleased with - not everybody loves it, just as we expected. But there's, I'd say, more positive than dissention and positive in the extreme. So we're very pleased with how the communication is going thus far.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Heath Terry of Goldman Sachs.

Heath Terry

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Just wanted to get maybe back to some of the work that you're doing on customer frequency. As you look at the components of that, that you're working on, personalization, marketing, some of the search and really, technology investments that you're making, can you give us a sense of sort of the progress that you feel like you've made so far? And where - as you look at the pipeline for the year ahead, sort of where you see the biggest opportunities? And if there are specific road marks or initiatives that you've got that we should be watching for this year, which ones you would call out?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

I mean I'd start by saying that we're really pleased with the progress we saw in 2019, and Rachel shared that like in the fourth quarter, habitual buyers were our fastest-growing segment yet again, growing 23% year-over-year. GMS per active buyer was up yet again. On the two year stack, it was up 6%. The percentage of people who shopped two or more days in the year was up again. So we're very pleased with a lot of these leading indicators that show that we are, in fact, driving frequency. And I'm happy with the way you've led in the question, speaking about both product and marketing levers, because they're both important. We are making search better. We've talked about some of the things we've done, like nonlinear models and leveraging the cloud to just use more data and more robust models to deliver better search, and that drives more conversion. And nothing gets someone more likely to come back than having bought and been happy with that purchase. So as conversion rate goes up, you get turn visitors into buyers and buyers come back more often. Life cycle marketing is a big opportunity for us. So we are bringing in a new set of technology around life cycle marketing that's going to allow us to be much more segmented and much more personalized in how we communicate through our own channels, things like e-mail and on the app, and we're really excited to be able to take that to another level in 2020. And then if you look at the paid marketing that we are doing, we're pleased with the progress that we're seeing there. And that's all the way through the funnel. So for example, if you look at our television commercials, they really don't do anything to explain what Etsy is. They're not really designed with someone who's never heard of Etsy in mind. They're designed for someone who's already generally familiar with Etsy to trigger very specific purchase occasions. So you're seeing very specific merchandise and purchase occasions, and we're seeing benefits from that. The mid-funnel work that we're doing as well, so things like advertising on Facebook and other channels with ads and video that might target, for example, people who are just entering a wedding process. We're also seeing us triggering that I should have had a V8 moment of, oh, gosh, of course, yes, I should think of Etsy for that. So it's a combination of the product work and the marketing work that we're doing to come together and drive that metric.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Maria Ripps of Canaccord.

Maria Ripps

Analyst · Canaccord

I wanted to ask about ROI related to Offsite Ads. With 6 to 8x ROI sort of guaranteed to sellers, how are you thinking about your own ROI around this initiative? In fact, you remain sort of all other revenue associated with the transaction? And I guess what's a reasonable ROI range for Etsy that you'd be considered - that you'll be willing to consider here?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · Canaccord

So we're always very focused on, if we spend $1, are we getting more than $1 back on a risk-adjusted basis? And this program, we have the ability to operate and decide how much to invest on a daily and weekly basis. And in fact, it's much easier to operate than the program it's replacing. So if you think about the program that the offsite advertising is replacing, we had a couple of hundred - hundreds of thousands of individual seller campaigns that we were executing, and each one of them had its own budget. And on any given day, sellers are hitting their budget, and we're having to manage that. And so this new iteration of Offsite Ads allows us to run one campaign that pulls the data and is, therefore, more effective and drives better roll-offs overall for our sellers, so they benefit from that. It's also much easier for us to manage, and we now have one budget we can spend. And like we always do, we'll be paying very careful attention to what is the return on the next dollar that we spend in performance marketing. This will change the ROI curve a little bit. It will allow us to invest a little more. With sellers kicking in, it allows us to invest more profitably to drive growth, and we're excited about that. And you do see that a bit in the margins when Rachel talked about the fact that we'll be taking up marketing a little bit, and so we'll be seeing a little bit of deleverage in marketing. It's because the take rate has changed, and we're getting more ROI as we invest.

Rachel Glaser

Analyst · Canaccord

And I just want to underscore 2 points there. One is that it is an effective take rate increase. And just like when we did the pricing change last summer, taking up the take rate creates a larger LTV, so we can invest more at the same or higher ROI. So that's one thing. The second thing is the margin expense goes up, not only because we're reinvesting, but also because of the accounting. So we the way this is accounted for now is our spend will hit the marketing expense line. And formally, the portion of the spend that was for Google Shopping was hitting cost of revenue.

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · Canaccord

And actually, to draw that comparison out a little bit. A couple of years ago, we changed the commission on Etsy. But we told sellers, we're going to be reinvesting the substantial majority of that money back into the platform, in marketing to grow traffic, and then product to make the customer experience better. And we live to that. We did reinvest most of that money back, and it has delivered growth. We've seen great growth over the next - over the past couple of years. And Etsy Ads and Offsite Ads, the idea is we will now be able to invest more, and we will use this money to reinvest in the business to drive growth because we are chasing what we believe is an absolutely enormous TAM. We think the opportunity for this business is huge, and we are in the early stages of unpacking it, and we see great opportunities to invest profitably for growth, and we want to make sure we're capturing those.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Tom Forte of D.A. Davidson.

Thomas Forte

Analyst · D.A. Davidson

So my first question is, how should we think about your own advertising efforts, and presumably, the higher cost of TV and digital advertising during an election year?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · D.A. Davidson

Yes. Well, first, let me say, we like what we're seeing. So the results have been good, and they were strong in the fourth quarter. So TV is always a little harder to measure precisely, but we use multiple different statistical techniques, and they point to that having been a good investment in the fourth quarter. We're also learning. I think our creative is becoming more effective. I think our media strategies are becoming more effective. We're starting to buy upfronts, which means we get better prices. There's a lot happening in TV now that's getting us more and more efficient. You're right that the election is - throws some uncertainty into the year in several ways for us. We did do some upfronts for 2020. So we've locked in some capacity already, and we're glad we did. And we'll have to see how the election cycle plays out. But we have built some buffer in for that as we've thought about the guidance, we've given you.

Thomas Forte

Analyst · D.A. Davidson

Great. And then for my follow-up question, I know you said that online sales tax law changes was not a big headwind. But I was curious if you noticed any noticeable trends such as lower conversion rates on higher-priced items after online sales taxes were rolled out.

Rachel Glaser

Analyst · D.A. Davidson

Yes. We definitely do see a bigger impact to higher AOV items. So Etsy has a number of categories where that would apply to, and Reverb also because their average order value is significantly higher than Etsy's average order value. It did see more impact than Etsy core marketplace did. With that said, we think that's completely de minimis - Reverb relative to Etsy's overall size is completely de minimis to our overall consolidated results. And so we - that's why we said we don't believe there's any material impact from the Etsy sales going forward, and the impact that we called out in the past year is going to be lapped by the time we get to October 1, 2020.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Marvin Fong of BTIG.

Marvin Fong

Analyst · BTIG

I jumped on the call a little late, I apologize if these have been asked already. But just wanted to drill down further on the repeat buyers, I think - or the people who shop twice somewhere a year. It looks like it grew about in line with the total buyer population or actually a little bit better. If you could just comment on what you're seeing there and why you think the habitual buyer growth rate - the delta between that and the total pool of active buyers continue to widen, that would be great.

Rachel Glaser

Analyst · BTIG

Yes. So we said, habitual buyers are growing 23% this year to about 2.5 million. I think the chart in the slide deck shows it, is that it's - in the quarter, we actually had some pretty big uptick in what we think that - one of the metrics we use for frequency, which is GMS - trailing 12-month GMS per active buyer, which grew over - almost 4% in the quarter, and it's over 6% in a 2-year stack basis. So we're starting to see - if you were to plot those things, I think it was about 130 basis points of growth in the quarter, whereas previous quarters have been smaller than that, and in some quarters, it hasn't increased at all. So we're starting to see some material inroads. And I think the important part is that the habitual buyers who are really the most valuable buyers for Etsy are the fastest-growing segment. So we're making - the message is resonating with the buyers that we care most about.

Marvin Fong

Analyst · BTIG

Great. And then my follow-up, I was just kind of noodling around on the community forms and what you guys published about the Offsite Ads. I think you said you expect it to be about 10% of typical seller's volume. If you could just kind of elaborate on - is that kind of based on your experience with the GPLA? And is there any upside to that possible? I know you guys are actually expanding this to other platforms besides Google. So if you could just kind of comment on that, that would be great.

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · BTIG

Yes, it is based on our existing experience with PLA programs, and so we're just trying to dimensionalize for sellers what kind of impact this might be because they've got to think about pricing strategies and other things. And we want to reassure them that, for most sellers, this is going to be a very small part of their sales. And so we don't want them to jump to conclusions around things before they have a chance to experience it. We're also going to give them a couple of weeks of sort of free trial period, where they will actually get to experience it. And I think for folks who think that this is going to be a large part of their sales, that will typically be reassuring.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Darren Aftahi of Roth Capital Partners.

Darren Aftahi

Analyst · Roth Capital Partners

Nice quarter. Just two here. Just could you comment - in the release, you talked about the listings in the U.S. and then orders with free shipping, just a disparity between the 74% and 48% for orders. And then on the Offsite Ads piece, Josh, you made some commentary in the call about subsidizing. I'm just kind of curious what kind of inherent risk does this move have. And what are your kind of hedges in place to make sure that this doesn't kind of get out of hand in terms of subsidizing?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · Roth Capital Partners

Yes. So on the first question, maybe I'll take the first [indiscernible]. On the first one, the difference between 74% and 48% - and that's a good catch, thanks for catching that. The items under $35 typically don't ship for free. And so - and those have a fairly high conversion rate and kind of high velocity because they're pretty cheap. So that would explain the difference between 74% of listing views offer free shipping eligible, but only 48% of orders arriving are because of free shipping. The delta there is really about lower-priced items, particularly items under $35.

Rachel Glaser

Analyst · Roth Capital Partners

On the - I'm going to - you let me know if I don't answer this the way you are expecting because I'm not quite sure what you were getting at. We think that the new version of our Offsite Ads program is actually much lower risk for sellers because they're not going to pay for the ad unless they make a sale, but also lower risk for Etsy in a lot of ways. Because we had a performance PLA program before, and we were buying PLAs and driving GMS for sellers, but also GMS for Etsy. The way this is designed now - and then we did our first version of Etsy Ads where we were basically asking sellers to opt-in or adopt their own but - assign their own budgets to PLAs. And as Josh said, we saw a nice, healthy uptick in budgets and really minimal churn. But we needed the right sellers in the program to make the market, and we saw that it was going to take a bit of time to get to that scale that we needed to actually take over Etsy's footprint and what we were buying for PLA. And so this is a much - it's almost instant. We continue our PLA program. We also are able to do it cooperatively with our sellers. They make money when there's a successful sale, and it achieves the same result where it - we are in some - to some extent subsidizing that we can divert more of our dollars at the upper funnel brand marketing as we had always intended to.

Operator

Operator

Your last question comes from Ygal Arounian of Wedbush Securities.

Ygal Arounian

Analyst · Wedbush Securities

So just on the Offsite Ads, just maybe you could give a little bit more color on, as you expand this, and you're - you'll be spending more marketing, where are you right now in terms of social? And how does that fit into your overall performance budget? So I guess what I really mean by that is you've been, I think, exclusively or mostly spending on Google PLAs, and now you're going to be stepping into Facebook and Instagram and some of the other performance sites, moving mid funnel a little bit. So is there - dollars are going to be coming off of Google? Is that budget just going to be expanding while Google remains flat? And can all this lead to - you've had - you had 17% of GMS being driven by paid traffic. Can that expand meaningfully as you expand your performance in social budgets?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · Wedbush Securities

Great questions. All right. So let's start. Let me try to attack these one at a time. So your - one of the questions you asked is, is this going to come at the expense of Google? And no, we don't think so. As long as the next dollar we spend on Google is a profitable dollar, we'll keep spending. So it's - and not an or, right? We're looking at how can we find more ways to put money to work that drive profitable growth for Etsy and for our sellers. And the more the better, as long as they're providing a good ROI. So on social, your next question was, how are we doing on social? And on social, I would say it's still early days, and I'm excited about that because that means that there's real upside potential for us to do more. The tactic that we've unlocked over the course of the past couple of quarters that does seem to really be working for us is retargeting. So finding people who came to Etsy found something they like and didn't buy and then retargeting to Facebook, it's turning out to be an effective strategy that is helpful to drive incremental purchases in an ROI-positive way. We are working on other strategies in social that are sort of bottom of the funnel and would love to unlock more that would be part of the offsite advertising program. And again, to be part of the offsite advertising program, we have to be listing a specific listing of individual sellers on a third-party site like Google or Facebook. So now let's move to mid funnel. This would not count as off-site advertising. But showing videos to people who have different life events, talking about Etsy and what we have…

Ygal Arounian

Analyst · Wedbush Securities

I know we're running late, but just one more I really want to ask, and it's a little bit bigger picture. And just going back to the growth rates in GMS during the quarter. And so you have 30% growth in Cyber 5 and then you have 20% growth for the whole quarter. I'm just wondering, was there - what drove that gap? Is that normal seasonality? Was it the things that you put into place during that period that really drove the growth rate higher? And are those things that you can implement over the course of a full quarter to drive that gap kind of closer between the 20% for the whole quarter, 30% for the holiday?

Joshua Silverman

Analyst · Wedbush Securities

Q4 was an exciting quarter. I think for Etsy, like most peer, the folks that we've heard talk about the quarter, I think many of us have had a very common experience, which is the shift in Thanksgiving moving had a pretty big impact on consumer behavior at large. So November was slow, and December was strong. And net-net, it seems like consumers spend about the same. And we did great, and we feel great about how we did in the fourth quarter. But the pacing of it was very different this year than it was last year. Thanks, everyone, for your time. We really appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.