Pinterest Tests Out Do-It-Yourself Promoted Pins for Businesses

Popular image sharing platform Pinterest is continuing to find new ways to earn ad revenue with the huge audience they’ve captured within the last couple of years. The first was Promoted Pins, which allows national brands to share sponsored content on the platform. The only problem with that was Pinterest was targeting big, national brands looking to pay up to $1 million per national advertising campaign. Now, Pinterest is taking a different route expanding the advertising opportunity to smaller businesses with a do-it-yourself option.

It was last month when Pinterest released their Promoted Pins product to big name brands like LuluLemon, Banana Republic, Gap, Old Navy, Target, Ziploc, Disney. The product was sold to them on a CPM (cost per impression) basis, based on the number of impressions the brand received on the site.

Now, Pinterest wants to make it easier for brands who aren’t necessarily big “premium advertisers” to take part with a self serve option. Small and medium-sized businesses will now have the opportunity to only pay for ads that have been clicked on. This cost-per-click model will be very similar to Facebook promoted posts:

1. You start by picking out one of your Pins you want to appear in Pinterest’s search or category feeds. Then, you set up targeting and decide who you want to see your ad.

2. Pinterest says you’ll only pay when people click through to your website. When you set up promoted pins, you’ll get comprehensive analytics to track those Pins that are getting the most clicks, impressions, and repins.

3. If this sounds amazing to you and you want to get started, you’ll have to join a waiting list by filling out this form. Pinterest says they’ll get back to you when they’re ready.

About Promoted Pins:

• Promoted Pins show up in users’ search category feeds and look at the same as any other Pinterest pin, except it will have a “Promoted Pin” tag at the bottom. Pinterest started testing these last fall to a limited number of advertisers.

• While Pinterest is trying to jump on the social advertising wagon, the site has made it a point to say they want to make it as tasteful, relevant, and non-intrusive to the user as possible.

• Along with a full plate advertising program, they will be updating the analytics platform, giving businesses more information about their impressions, clicks, and repins.

You can read more about Promoted Pins on the official Pinterest blog post.