What Is Wayfair Advertising?

Last Updated: Apr 16, 2024

Wayfair offers a marketing and advertising platform for businesses that sell home furnishings and other similar goods. The brand receives more than 778M page views each month and has a social following of more than 3.3M. 

However, as the platform continues to grow, it is becoming more competitive. Without implementing best practices, brands can struggle to be discovered. This guide was created to share the tips and guidelines you need to build a successful Wayfair advertising strategy.

https://sell.wayfair.com/grow-advertising

What Can You Sell on Wayfair?

https://www.wayfair.com/

Wayfair is a home goods sales platform, so anything that fits within that category is eligible. These include:

  • Furniture
  • Pillows and other soft goods
  • Lighting
  • Kitchen appliances
  • Goods for kids and babies
  • Bed and bath accessories
  • Rugs 
  • Renovation supplies
  • Outdoor furniture and equipment
  • Home storage items
  • Items for pets

As you can see, these product categories encompass a wide range of items.

Why Should You Advertise on Wayfair?

It only takes a bit of research to see why so many eCommerce brands have embraced Wayfair advertising. The company has truly emerged as the top home goods sales platform. There’s also no denying the company’s excellent reputation among consumers and merchants.

Benefits of Advertising on Wayfair

Here are some of the key benefits of Wayfair advertising:

  • Wayfair’s 150% growth in 2021
  • Improved ad features
  • Less market competition
  • Engaged customer base
  • Direct shipping options
  • A more targeted audience than Amazon
  • Lower advertising costs

Further, Wayfair has made it easy to set up ads, track ROI, and boost product awareness.

Wayfair Ad Types and Promotions

You can select from several Wayfair advertising options. Here is a primer on eight types of ads and promotional options available to you.

Wayfair Sponsored Products Ads

Similar to Amazon and Walmart, Wayfair now offers sponsored product ads, which appear in search results based on keyword targets searched by consumers. These ads show up in organic search results, automated and driven by categories. They don’t look like ads at first – Wayfair integrates sponsored products into the results to make them appear organic.

Wayfair Standard Display Ads

Standard display ad example on wayfair

Standard display ads appear as banners on the site to target shoppers at a different phase of the buying cycle. They run on most store pages, minus the homepage, and can be used to market your entire brand name, regardless of the customer’s search results.

Wayfair uses its own proprietary display ad platform called Magellan, the Google Display Network, and other networks. Brands that choose to participate in display advertising campaigns will see their products recommended both on and off the Wayfair website.

Wayfair Native Display Ads

Native display ads are another type of general ad that appears in the site’s side columns. These ads integrate into the customer’s scrolling behavior as they search between product types.

Recently, Wayfair has increased the amount of money they invest in native advertising networks such as Taboola, Outbrain, and Yahoo Gemini. These advertising platforms drive traffic to landing pages with advertising content that is designed to fit in with the news site or web page on which they are displayed.

Wayfair Sponsored Shops

On April 15, 2021, Wayfair released an update that included a new advertising option: sponsored shops. These are similar to sponsored products. However, instead of promoting a single product, sponsored shops can promote entire product categories, lines, or brands. 

Sponsored shop ads are displayed as banners across the Wayfair website. You can also customize them with your brand logo and other features.

Temporary Price Cut (TPC)

A temporary price cut is just like the name implies. Prices are slashed temporarily on a product line or category. This technique works well to generate interest in a new product. Additionally, you can use a TPC to clear out stagnant inventory that isn’t selling well.

TPC is not always a profitable strategy. However, Wayfair’s seller analytics, which track market performance, customer behavior, and more, can help you determine the value of your price cuts.

Flash Deals

A flash deal is a limited-time, on-site promotion. To participate, suppliers place bids to have their products placed into the available time slots. The winning products are then featured prominently on the Wayfair website with “Flash Deal” indicators to ensure the ads stand out. Flash deals are ideal for moving products that are already popular or to unload surplus stock.

Holiday Promotions

As a furniture and home décor site, Wayfair offers many opportunities for sellers to run holiday promotions. Timing merchandise for the appropriate seasonal rush is key for certain product types, which is why Wayfair’s seller dashboard includes sales data that can help you map out seasonal buying trends and adjust accordingly. Take part in holiday sales events, their retail pricing is automatically approved through Partner Home, Wayfair’s seller platform.

Wayfair’s promotional calendar emphasizes national holidays like Labor Day, President’s Day, Independence Day, Back to School, and more. Participating in these sales and taking Wayfair’s in-house suggestions for product prices increases your visibility on the site by helping you rank higher in Wayfair’s algorithm.

Way Day

https://www.nj.com/shopping-deals/2021/04/when-is-wayfairs-way-day-2021-what-time-does-it-start-what-is-it-heres-everything-you-need-to-know.html

Way Day is Wayfair’s largest annual sale. It is comparable to events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. As with other scheduled sales events, brands must decide to participate and approve their prices before a deadline. If they don’t, pricing will be approved automatically. 

Way Day takes place in the Spring around the end of April and lasts for two days. This 48-hour event has one additional requirement: All brands must stock sufficient inventory to handle the influx of orders they will receive during this special Wayfair advertising event.

Wayfair Advertising Strategy

Wayfair offers home goods brands plenty of retail advertising options to promote their products and companies both on and off the platform. That’s great, but it isn’t enough. You need to have a comprehensive Wayfair advertising strategy to sell products.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and Share of Voice (SOV)

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is a metric that details the amount of revenue earned for each dollar spent on advertising. 

If ROAS is an important metric for you, there are a few things to consider. First, it may be a good idea to start with a low bid strategy. Then, increase your bids on the keywords or product categories that appear to be performing well. Also, consider being a bit more conservative with your ad spend. 

If ROAS isn’t as important, you can be a bit more aggressive with both bidding and ad spend.

Share of voice (SOV) measures the amount of the market that your brand owns compared to other brands in the same space. SOV reflects brand visibility and whether you tend to dominate the conversation within your niche. In paid advertising, SOV measures one brand’s share of advertising on a specific marketplace vs. its competitors.

One way to measure SOV is to pay attention to your impressions. This is the number of times your ad appears in search results. The higher the number, the better.

Gain Visibility for New or Low-Performing Products

Unfortunately, not all products move as well as you’d like. New products are slow to start. Others lose momentum or never really gain traction at all. It can be challenging to sell those products, but you can choose advertising strategies to help with that.

Temporary price cuts are especially effective when it comes to moving low-performing products. They also work well to introduce new products to audiences in search of a bargain. You can use sponsored products advertising to draw attention to new products as well.

Support Your Organic Efforts

It’s always good to have an effective paid Wayfair advertising strategy. At the same time, you should also be engaging in organic marketing efforts. These are the steps you take to boost SEO, reputation, and visibility that don’t involve paid ads. 

Organic marketing efforts include:

  • Using SEO keywords in product and shop descriptions
  • Adding high-quality photos
  • Engaging in smart pricing strategies
  • Focusing on benefits when writing product descriptions

And above all, product quality and customer service are key.

Optimize for Mobile Devices

One of the most important organic efforts you can make is optimizing your listings for mobile. In 2021, mobile commerce (m-commerce) sales exceeded 359 billion dollars. The overwhelming percentage of sales completed on online marketplaces are now through mobile devices. 

To maximize your Wayfair sales, your images, descriptions, and other content must load quickly on mobile and be easy to read.

Optimize for Product Listing Content

Your product listings should be optimized to be as attractive to potential customers as possible. To do this, start with keyword research. You want your listings to be optimized for one primary keyword phrase and perhaps one or two other phrases. Use your primary keyword in your title and at least once more in your description.

It’s also helpful to make your descriptions as easy to read as possible for mobile users and “skimmers.” Incorporate the most important features for each product into bullet points. These will stand out, and shoppers can scan them quickly for the information they need.

Measure the Effectiveness of Your Performance Ads

Fortunately, the Wayfair advertising program offers plenty of ways for you to evaluate ad performance. Whether you use sponsored products or other options, there are several reports you can generate to track a wide range of performance metrics.

Here are some reports to look at closely to measure performance:

  • Product report
  • Product keyword report
  • Part number performance report

Learn to understand these reports so you can optimize your campaigns to get better results.


Beyond reports, you can also test your ads to gain insight. Decide which aspect you intend to test, whether the ad’s design, click-through rate, audience, or more. Sample testing can help you scale your campaigns for new targets

How to Get Started Selling on Wayfair

It’s fairly easy to get started selling home goods products on Wayfair. This brief Wayfair advertising guide will walk you through the process.

Getting Partnered

https://partners.wayfair.com/d/ph-acquisition-inbound-ui/application_form

Before selling products or participating in Wayfair advertising, you have to sign up as a partner. The application process involves entering information about yourself and your company.

Here are the steps:

  • Visit partners.wayfair.com, scroll down to “Apply Today” and click “Get Started.” Wayfair will then ask you to identify your business.
  • Input your contact name, job title, email address, and phone number under “Contact Information.”
  • Under “Business Information,” fill out your legal business name and address.
  • Under “Logistical Information,” inform Wayfair about your logistics process. This includes which countries you have fulfillment centers in, whether you can offer dropship, whether you accept returns, and the retailers you currently sell with.
  • Paste your product catalog under “Online Catalog Links.”

Once this is approved, you can begin the rest of the process.

Product Setup

You’ve received your approval, so now take the following steps:

  • Upload product pictures and descriptions
  • Enlist your inventories
  • Allow Wayfair to optimize your product and inventory listings
  • Customize your shop and product descriptions to best target customers.

If you need assistance with any of this, Wayfair has a vendor partnership program and 24/7 vendor support.

Campaign Setup

This is the point at which you will engage in Wayfair advertising or take part in promotional campaigns. Campaign setup involves the following steps:

  • Identify your goals
  • Choose the campaign or promotion
  • Set your budget and make bids
  • Track campaign performance metrics
  • Optimize

Keep in mind that advertising on Wayfair is not inexpensive. Plan your campaigns carefully.

Key Takeaways

⦁ Wayfair advertising represents a large eCommerce market dedicated to home décor products
⦁ Its extensive logistics network and recent growth present market advantages to sellers
⦁ Incorporate Wayfair’s many available ad structures into your marketing strategy to increase product visibility and sales
⦁ Recruit an ad management platform to optimize your marketing strategy on Wayfair

Getting the Most Out of Wayfair Paid Advertising

Wayfair is a top-ranked online marketplace for a good reason. The site is well-designed and appealing to customers. Home goods brands can make a significant amount of revenue selling their products there.

However, it’s also a very challenging marketplace. As eCommerce grows, so does marketplace competition. Many brands struggle to stand out. This is where Search Nurture can help. We offer services to help you manage your Wayfair ad campaigns.

Let the combination of our expertise and the insights provided by first class advertising platform level up your Wayfair advertising. Contact us for more information.

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