Poshmark Jumps On Facebook Marketplace Partnership Bandwagon
Poshmark is the latest marketplace taking advantage of Meta's new Facebook Marketplace Partnership program, boosting cross-market visibility for items listed on the site.
The announcement was released in a company blog post today, with Poshmark saying they are testing the program with a small number of listings to start.
Poshmark
We’re thrilled to announce a new partnership we’re testing with Facebook Marketplace that is designed to bring immense value to both shoppers and sellers. Facebook users in the U.S. are now able to browse Poshmark listings directly on Facebook Marketplace.
This test is designed to give our sellers increased visibility by introducing your listings to Facebook’s expansive audience, helping you reach new shoppers, make more sales, and grow your Poshmark businesses even faster.
As a seller, you don’t need to do anything differently—your listings, pricing, and shipping process remain exactly the same. This partnership works behind the scenes to amplify your reach with zero extra effort.
This collaboration is about making Poshmark closets more accessible, empowering more people to embrace circular fashion, and helping our seller community turn their style into earnings.
As with our other tests, we’re starting small to ensure listings appear favorably on Facebook Marketplace, and we’ll continue to test and learn—stay tuned for more updates.
Meta launched Facebook Marketplace Partnership earlier this year in response to increasing antitrust scrutiny in Europe and the US, tapping eBay as one of their early adopters for the program.
Liz Morton
Since then, Meta has moved quickly to expand the program, welcoming other marketplaces to join, and users have reported they are finally seeing some Marketplace Partnership listings live in the wild - but it hasn't been all good news for eBay sellers as eBay's use of AI to summarize product descriptions displayed on Facebook has raised concerns about potential increases in not as described claims.
Liz Morton
The decision to use AI-created summaries appears to have been on eBay's side, not a requirement from Facebook, so hopefully Poshmark will avoid putting their sellers in that same precarious position.
Like the integration with eBay, Poshmark listings will appear on Facebook clearly designated as Marketplace Partner listings with a "check out with Poshmark" button that will take the user to Poshmark to complete the purchase.
Since the actual sale will still be taking place on Poshmark, all of the usual terms, conditions and policies should still apply just like any sale on the platform.
Also like eBay, Poshmark does not mention anything about sellers having to pay extra to have their listings featured on Facebook Marketplace - but that doesn't mean it couldn't become part of paid advertising programs at some point in the future.
Facebook's help page for the program makes it very clear that Marketplaces partners may enjoy an initial fee-free trial period, but eventually these placements will be monetized on a cost per click basis.
Are there any costs or fees involved in becoming a Marketplace partner?
Each new partner will have an initial period of fee-free integration. This will provide you with the opportunity to assess the benefits you get from the partnership without incurring any fees.After this initial fee-free period, we'll charge on a cost-per-click basis. This, means you’ll incur a charge each time a user clicks on a button within the product details page of your Marketplace listing that redirects them to your website, where they can complete the transaction.
Additional information on the cost-per-click model will be shared once you fill out the interest form and we determine your eligibility.
To be clear, if/when Facebook starts charging these fees it will be to the marketplace (eBay, Poshmark etc.) not to individual sellers - but it's unlikely that the marketplaces will continue to foot the bill forever without finding a way to pass at least some of those costs on to sellers either directly or indirectly.
eBay sellers have speculated that participation in Offsite Ads may eventually be required for your listings to be eligible for cross-promotion on Facebook, though eBay has so far been tight-lipped about any future plans they may have.
Users have already recently noted an uptick in intrusive popup ads on the site, and Poshmark has been eyeing ways to increase ad revenue after last year's failed attempt to change their fee structure, so it will not be surprising if Poshmark eventually uses this as a way to entice more sellers into using Promoted Closets or creates new seller paid ad products around the Facebook program as well.
Liz Morton
One big question eBay sellers asked when they announced their Facebook partnership was - why would a seller want (and maybe eventually pay ad fees for) eBay to cross-post their items to Facebook when the seller could just directly list items for sale on Facebook Marketplace themselves if they wanted exposure to those buyers?
Poshmark sellers will likely be asking the same question, but with an added wrinkle - their ability to cross-post their own items to Facebook themselves has recently been severely curtailed due to Poshmark's new Excessive Listing Removal policy that penalizes sellers for ending or deleting items from their closets.
Liz Morton
After initial outcry and major pushback from sellers, Poshmark said the policy would not apply to sellers who mark an item as not for sale because it sold through a different marketplace - but in practice that has not turned out to be true and many sellers report receiving warnings and suspensions for doing exactly that.
Liz Morton
As long as Poshmark continues to enforce the Excessive Listing Removal policy in this way, sellers are effectively handcuffed to the platform and risk having their account suspended or even permanently shut down if they continue to cross-list their items to multiple marketplaces themselves and remove items from Poshmark when they sell elsewhere.
That could set up a situation where the only way sellers can have their items listed on both Poshmark and Facebook Marketplace without running afoul of this policy is through the Poshmark Facebook partnership - and if Poshmark eventually monetizes the Facebook Marketplace partnership through Promoted Closet or some other ad offering while keeping that policy in place, that would be a serious conflict of interest.
For now, the partnership is in the early stages, so we'll just have to wait to see how it all plays out.
What do you think of Poshmark pushing listings to Facebook Marketplace? Let us know in the comments below!
