Chairish launches sponsored listings in just weeks — with one engineer

What Chairish Wanted

Chairish is the design lover's marketplace for vintage furniture and art, with over $30M in funding.

As they grew, Chairish realized they had an untapped revenue opportunity: sponsored product listings, similar to those on Amazon and eBay. Unfortunately, no out-of-the-box ad server gave them the flexibility they wanted, and they didn't have the resources to build the ad platform entirely from scratch.

So Chairish turned to Kevel's ad serving APIs. They outsourced the complicated, commoditized parts of ad serving to Kevel — like reporting, targeting, and decisioning — and instead focused their efforts on ad strategy, user feedback, and front-end work.

Within a few weeks, Chairish had launched a high-margin sponsored listings platform (with self-serve buying) that their sellers loved.

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Chairish's sellers can now pay to promote their products in relevant search results

Similar to Amazon's Sponsored Products, Chairish's listers can pay to have their items be promoted high-up for relevant searches. Sellers quickly embraced the opportunity, leading to a new revenue stream that had minimal impact on the user experience.

Outcome:

• 18x return-on-investment — Kevel paid for itself within the first month
• Sellers love the program, increasing their stickiness
• Search and category targeting ensures relevance

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"We may be a small marketplace, but with Kevel we quickly built a new revenue stream. It was profitable within one month of launching."

– Senior Software Engineer, Chairish

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Server-side integration means these native ads blend in

All of the Kevel-powered sponsored listings are white-labeled and the decisions are requested server-side — giving Chairish total control over how the promotions are displayed.

Outcome:

• Kevel-powered ads look just like standard listings
• Ad response times as low as 50ms, even at scale
• Chairish built this bespoke, complex platform in just weeks — with only one engineer on the project

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"Building our sponsored listing program was easy with Kevel - and our sellers love it. Driving advertiser adoption was not difficult."

– Senior Software Engineer, Chairish

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Automation makes managing these promoted listings easy

Chairish employs Kevel's UI and Management APIs to automate the start/end dates of campaigns, as well as specify pacing and budgets - ensuring that their advertisers don't go over budgets.

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"Margins can be low with peer-to-peer marketplaces. Fortunately, sponsored listings are a great way to increase the revenue you make per seller."

– Senior Software Engineer, Chairish

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Self-serve ad portal drives fast advertiser adoption

To opt-in to the program, sellers just need to visit their Chairish listings portal. Within it, there's an intuitive tab to insert a budget and credit card — all one needs to get started.

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"Kevel is perfect for marketplaces looking to add sponsored listings, especially if engineering resources are limited."

– Senior Software Engineer, Chairish