Pinterest Advertising
Since it was founded in 2010, Pinterest is just now starting to get a foot into the social media advertising door. While it has big plans to incorporate social ads into its platforms, Pinterest’s ads are in the conceptual and piloting stages and thus there is not a whole lot of data out there to write about. However, you should still keep reading about what this fast-growing platform has to offer.
Why Use Pinterest?
As of 2014, 90% of online retailers have a presence on Pinterest. Without any advertising (since it’s not available yet), 18% of content engagement on Pinterest is brand driven. This means brands are doing their job and staying active on Pinterest to draw in pinners to their page and boards. Now imagine the possibilities once brands can pay for ads to drive success their way! Just as well, pins on Pinterest differ from pictures on say, Instagram, because of their ‘richness.’ Rich Pins include metadata like locations, real-time pricing, “Buy This” links, recipes, etc. All of these informative pins need a “push” in the right direction, and the advertising Pinterest has planned is the key.
Ad Types
Pinterest currently has 2 ad types that they are beta testing: Promoted Pins & Buyable Pins.
Promoted Pins are pins that appear in your Pinterest feed board just like regular pins, only brands are paying to have them seen by more people more often. Promoted Pins help comapnies with brand awareness, engagement and traffic. This is exemplified in the Bank of America example that we will talk about later.
Case Study: Bank of America reached 6 million unique Pinners in less than 5 months and saw 2X engagement on their Promoted Pins earlier this year. How did a bank even use Pinterest? Did they pin pictures of money? No. They took a page right out of Erik Qualman's book Socialnomics. They focused on driving potential customers to their Pinterest page by addressing the industry, not the product. People come to Pinterest for ideas about crafts, remodeling, recipes, and money saving ideas. So Bank of America generously made a Pinterest Board around Better Money Habits when Buying a Home. They provided tips for conserving money as new homeowners and got a lot of attention for their efforts. They didn’t shove their services down people’s throats, they simply addressed the industry and practice of money saving in a tight economy and pushed ads out there to get people’s attention. You can read their full Pinterest case study here as well as see an example of their 'Better Money Habits for Buying a Home' Pinterest board below.
Buyable Pins are the newest social media advertising endeavor by Pinterest. This feature will allow users to buy a brand's products directly from the Pinterest platform via pins marked with little blue price tags. Pinterest has called upon retail giants (and my favorite brands) like Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Kate Spade, and Nordstrom’s to pilot the program. You can see an example of buyable pins in the image below. What brands do you hope to see in the future from Pinterest’s Buyable Pins? Would you feel comfortable making an in-app purchase on Pinterest, or would you rather go to the retailer's site? Why?
Pricing
Because both of these features are so new, Pinterest has not made them publicly available to all brands who want to advertise with them. There is a waitlist you can sign up for if you're interested in Promoted Pins, but companies with the privilege of testing Buyable Pins were exclusively selected by Pinterest. Since Pinterest is still piloting their ad programs, there is no pricing available yet as to what the ads cost to run.
Audience & Targeting
Pinterest, though in the early stages of unleashing its ad program, is preparing quite extensively for when it does. They have developed Pinterest Analytics, a program from which brands will be able to track the success of their promoted and buyable pins from inside the Pinterest platform. Pretty cool, right? Way to give Google a run for their money, Pinterest! (but not really…) Pinterest also announced that they will be developing targeting metrics for ads including what a pinner searches for (crafts, home decor, recipes) as well as regular demographics (age, gender, location).
Closing Thoughts
Pinterest continues to contribute to the raging DIY (Do It Yourself) notion that has been sweeping the nation for some time. With 70 million registered users and 20 million monthly active users, the site is doing pretty well for itself without advertising or a mack-daddy parent company (like Instagram and Facebook). Big brands have proven they can dominate on Pinterest (Macy’s, Bank of America), but it is just as viable an option for small businesses too, like the DIY companies featured on etsy.com. Pinterest seems like they have their ducks in a row, now it’s time for them to prove it.
Do you think Pinterest has what it takes to compete against the other social media platforms in the social media ad industry? Sound off in the comments below!
Facts provided by wordstream.com, hootsuite.com, adweek.com, altimetergroup.com, pinterest.com and the book Socialnomics.
Images taken from altimetergroup and pinterest.
----