What is a product (advert)?

In our knowledge base content, we use the phrase product (advert) to refer to an item being listed for sale on the Marketplacer platform. 

A product and an advert are the same thing but the terminology used within the Marketplacer platform varies:

• In the Marketplacer front end, it's a product.
• In the API, it's an advert.

This is a reflection of the evolution of the platform and the complexity of changing the terminology we use in the API. The Marketplacer front end has evolved to reflect these changes, but the API end points are unchanged. We recognise that changing the end points when you have a substantial established user base, who would need to update their integrations, is problematic.

When Marketplacer started, we had a focus on private sellers, who could create ad hoc, and generally one off, advertisements for any item. For example, a user who had just purchased a new road bike might sell their old bike via a marketplace. Initially, we referred to items as adverts, and that terminology was used in the API. 

More recently, sellers have predominantly been retailers who are selling a range of products, and those products often have variants. For example, a particular style of t-shirt may come in a range of colors and sizes. The t-shirt style could be the product, and there would be one variant for each combination of color and size.