Case Study: Chairish achieves 18x ROI and launches self-serve sponsored listings in weeks with Kevel

Chairish launches sponsored listings in just weeks, with one engineer

Chairish, the design-lover’s marketplace for vintage furniture and art, wanted to add self-serve sponsored product listings to unlock a new revenue stream but lacked the engineering bandwidth and a flexible off-the-shelf ad server. To solve this, Chairish partnered with Kevel and used Kevel’s ad serving APIs (plus Kevel’s UI and Management APIs) to outsource reporting, targeting, and decisioning while focusing internal effort on ad strategy and the front end.

Kevel implemented a white‑labeled, server-side sponsored listings solution with a self-serve portal and automated pacing/budget controls; Chairish launched it in just weeks with one engineer. The result: Kevel paid for itself within the first month with an 18x return on investment, ad responses as fast as ~50ms and average response times under 100ms, sellers embraced the program and became more sticky, and Chairish gained a high‑margin revenue stream with minimal UX impact.

Chairish