Pinterest announced that it is working with a small group of marketing technology companies to offer Pinterest business insights. These include Salesforce (Exact Target Marketing Cloud), Hootsuite, Spredfast, Percolate, Piqora, Curalate, and Tailwind.

These companies are getting automated access to public data through Pinterest’s Business Insights API.

“Many businesses use Pinterest to learn about their customers,” says Pinterest’s Steve Cohen. “You might want to learn which of your products are popular, what types of images work best or which Pins are driving the most engagement and sales. All of these insights can help your business use Pinterest better, which in turn means a better experience for Pinners.”

“Insights help businesses engage better with Pinners,” he says. “This could be which boards and Pins are getting the most engagement, which downstream actions Pins are driving or what products are most popular with Pinners.”

Pinterest is, of course, keeping its own Pinterest Analytics offering around. Its partners are encouraged to add additional insights and features that Pinterest itself doesn’t currently offer.

Last month, Pinterest added support for Google Analytics UTM variables to give businesses a look at their performance in the Google Analytics dashboard.

Last week, Pinterest secured a new $200 million round of funding, and the company apparently intends to use the money to make discovery better, and help people find things. Pinterest is moving in more and more of a search direction, and that could mean big things for businesses. Having better insights is only going to gain importance.

Image via Pinterest