Pinterest Has New Ad Options to Help You Reach Your Marketing Goals

On Tuesday, Pinterest announced it has some big plans and offerings for advertisers this summer that will be focused on awareness, intent, and action.  With a new set of advertising options for video, audience targeting, pricing, and more, Pinterest is ready to help businesses reach their goals throughout each stage of the marketing funnel.

“We’re aligning Pinner action with marketing objectives,” said Tim Kendall, General Manager of Monetization. Pinterest understands that users go on the image-sharing platform for two main reasons: they want to discover content with the intent to purchase by repining or saving pins, or they take action by clicking through the pin to visit the website.

Here’s what advertisers can expect from Pinterest Ad Options in the next few months:

A New Kind of Video Ad: Pinterest will introduce a new spin on video advertising called Cinematic Pins, Pinterest’s “newest, most beautiful type of promoted pin”. Kendall described these as a “rebuke of interruptive and annoying auto play video ads”. Instead, the movement of the video ad begins as users scroll down their feed and the speed adjusts to the user’s scrolling speed. See an example below:

Lots of brands such as Gap Inc. L’Oreal, and Nestle are already on board.

New Audience Targeting: Advertisers will be able to target Promoted Pins to users based on interests, personal interests, and life stages. According to Pinterest, the data to do that is built from multiple signals captured by Pinterest. This includes what users do on the platform. The targeting is based on “what users tell us they want to do in the future, not in the moment or in the past”. This will provide advertisers with greater value as it reaches people as they are forming ideas or aspirations about the future as opposed to them simply searching for a cookie recipe or a travel destination. With this new targeting, advertisers can expect to reach different kinds of users such as travelers, foodies, and fashionistas.

Ad Engagement Pricing: Advertisers will only pay when users repin, click to view a pin up close, or click through to the advertiser’s website. This new CPR pricing model will help advertisers track future intent. This provides advertisers with helpful feedback on what content drives sales, and what doesn’t.

Promoted App Pins: More and more users will be utilizing their mobile phones, and for those marketers looking to get more installs on their app, they can take advantage of App Pins. This update officially puts Pinterest in the app install advertising market, which is expected to hit $3 billion in the U.S. this year according to eMarketer.

No matter if Pinterest users are seeking ideas for a wedding, vacation spot, camping trip, or home remodeling job, the intent is always aspirational with plans for the future. And Pinterest is there from the beginning of the buying process. This creates a great opportunity for Pinterest advertisers to gather insight about their customers’ actions in the future while also having the ability to target to the many different interests groups.

What are your thoughts on the new advertising options provided by Pinterest? As an advertiser, do you see yourself using these options in the future?