Targeted Content for a Real-Time Activity Feed: For First Time Visitors to Power Users

The Activity Feed is Etsy's take on the ubiquitous "web feed" - a continuous stream of aggregated content, personalized for each user. These streams have become the de facto means of serving advertisements in the context of social media. Any visitor to Facebook or Twitter has seen advertisements placed on their web feed. For Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods with over 29 million unique items, the AF makes the marketplace feel a bit smaller for users. It enables discovery of relevant content, including activities from their social graph, recommended shops and items, and new listings from favorite shops. At the same time, Etsy's AF provides a platform for presenting users with targeted content, as well as advertisements, served alongside relevant and timely content.

One of the biggest challenges for building such a feed is providing an engaging experience for all users across Etsy. Some users are first-time visitors who may find Etsy to be overwhelming. Others are long-time power users who already know what they're looking for and how to find it. In this work, we describe solutions to the challenges encountered while delivering targeted content to our tens of million of users. We also cover our means of adapting to each user's actions, evolving our targeted content offerings as the user's familiarity with Etsy grows. Finally, we discuss the impact of our system through extensive experimentation on live traffic, and show how these improvements have led to increased user engagement.