Pinterest is the latest player in the social media space to open their platform to advertising.
It should be no surprise here that Pinterest is going all-in with advertising on their platform, considering $89 Billion has been spent on social media advertising in 2019 and is projected to be $102 Billion in 2020 and only growing in the years to come.
Pinterest + E-commerce:
Pinterest is a social media platform where one can discover ideas and get inspired by other users’ “pins”. Pins are ideas that people on Pinterest create, find, and save from around the web. If you click through the Pin, you can visit the website to learn how to make it or where to buy it.
In the face of COVID-19, Pinterest claimed that in recent weeks it saw a jump in searches for topics like “home organization”, “tutorials for beginners”, “recipes”, while e-commerce shopping has become an increasing necessity as brick-and-mortar brands shut their doors for the foreseeable future. It will take a year or longer for the demand to reach pre-covid levels as customers are wary to go out and shop like usual, considering there is no vaccine available yet, albeit the soft opening of the economy is well in the works. It’s the perfect time for Pinterest to shift gears and provide the necessary technology, features for retailers and brands to cater to Pinterest’s user base during this time of heightened activity.
How can brands/retailers take advantage of this?
Brands on Pinterest will now have more ways to be discovered as the platform introduces new shopping features aimed at bringing products to where users are most likely to shop. The platform is being revamped to ensure the set-up and management processes are seamless for retailers and brands alike. Let’s take a look at what’s new in terms of the platform’s offerings:
1. New Verified Merchant Program
Retailers can become eligible for increased distribution and access to new measurement and analytics tools through the platform’s new program.
- Retailers can be verified making their products eligible for distribution across Pinterest shopping experiences, including ‘Shop the Look’ Pins and related product carousels
- Verified Merchants will have a blue checkmark badge on their profiles
- The program is broadly available at the moment
- Interested retailers can sign up at pinterest.com/verified
2. Updated Conversion Reporting
Retailers will have early access to organic and paid conversion insights to measure the advertising impact.
3. Shopping Ads
Intended for retailers to promote their products to reach more Pinners and optimize performance once product groups are set-up within updated Pinterest Catalogs
- Allows brands to upload their products to their catalogues feature for (shopping) ads and Product Pins, which display price, availability and product descriptions while linking directly to your e-commerce page. This feature has been optimized to "lessen the time from feed ingestion to Product Pin creation"
- Updates to this feature include new metrics, near real-time feed ingestion, user experience enhancements, and the ability to schedule feed uploads
4. Dynamic Retargeting
Retailers can take advantage of dynamic retargeting to reach users who've previously visited their site but didn’t purchase, as they continue to browse home feed.
- Dynamic retargeting can globally retarget exact or similar products that users search and save on Pinterest
- Coming soon: More “optimization levers” to give retailers more control
We believe Pinterest could be an interesting play and may be worth including as part of your media plan. Considering its whopping 335MM user base, it might not be a bad idea to allocate some portion of your media budget to advertising on Pinterest. Test it out and see where things go from there. Are you ready to take the plunge and roll in your advertising dollars to Pinterest yet? Reach out to us if the above intrigues you - We already have an established, growing partnership with Pinterest and would love to help you with your media planning and execution.
