When it comes to advertising, Pinterest says it’s about “mapping your business goals to the steps Pinners take to plan their futures.” With that in mind, Pinterest is now offering some new types of ad solutions to “give businesses a unique way to get in front of more people” on a path to purchasing. These new advertising options were rumored to be in the works a couple of months ago.

Sure to be more eye catching, Pinterest is debuting Cinematic Pins. Calling them “thumb-stoppers”, Pinterest says these Cinematic Pins are its “most beautiful type of Promoted Pin” yet.

Cinematic Pins, at first glance, appear to be Pinterest’s answer to video ads on sites like Facebook and Instagram – but that’s not entirely accurate. Cinematic Pins move when a user scrolls by them, which is pretty much the opposite of a Facebook video ad, for instance, which plays when you stop on it and stops playing (audibly as well) when you start scrolling. It’s clear that Pinterest’s goal here is catch eyes with that motion in the hopes it’ll make people stop and click or repin.

Is Pinterest part of your business plan? If so, how’s it working out? If not, do you think you’ll turn some attention to Pinterest in the near future? Let us know in the comments.

Pinterest is starting to roll out Cinematic Pins with a handful of big-name partners like Gap Inc. (Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic), L’Oreal USA (L’Oreal Paris, Maybelline and Garnier), Nestlé, STX Entertainment’s new movie The Gift, Target, Unilever, Visa Checkout, Walgreens and Wendy’s.

Apparently it’s worked in testing, at least according to Pinterest.

“Users want to feel like they’re in control, and we’ve done a bunch of user testing—users are delighted by this experience,” said Tim Kendall, Pinterest’s gm of monetization, to AdWeek. “They wind up scrolling back and forth. They love controlling the motion.”

Pinterest is also unveiling targeting options for Promoted Pins, allowing brands to target to specific subsets of users based on interests like millennials, foodies, gardeners, and travelers.

These new ad options – Cinematic Pins and audience targeting – are what Pinterest is describing as its “Awareness” tier of a three-pronged approach to advertising.

As you can see on level two, Pinterest is rolling out a new Cost-per-engagement model.

To know if your audience thinks your content is save-worthy, it’s best to measure their engagement through repins, closeups and clicks. In addition to our existing premium CPM and CPC Promoted Pins, we’re now rolling out a cost-per-engagement (CPE) model that’ll help you track future intent.

Also, if you spend enough on Promoted Pins, Pinterest will help you craft them with a new “Pin Factory”.:

We want you to have a great start with Promoted Pins, which is why we’re offering a few new services that make it easier to create great, promotable content. The Pin Factory is our Pin creative studio for brands. For a minimum spend, we’ll create beautiful, helpful Pin images and descriptions that get you results.

Pinterest has been taking steps as of late to look better to businesses. Last month, Pinterest announced its new Marketing Developer Partners (MDP).

“The program helps businesses optimize and scale their Pinterest marketing and improve Pinterest for Pinners,” a spokesperson for Pinterest told WebProNews. “The initial MPD program is made up of a limited, carefully selected group of developer partners who meet the needs of existing businesses on Pinterest and align with Pinterest’s core value of putting Pinners first.”

This program is designed to make it easier for marketers to find content to pin, and ultimately to pin said content in the best way possible.

The company also just launched its Developers Platform, a suite of APIs for building apps and integrations that Pinterest says will “bring pins to life.”

“The Platform will enable developers to tap into the Pinterest interest graph of more than 50 billion projects, places and products to build and grow their apps,” Pinterest spokesperson told WebProNews at the time. “With the new APIs, developers will be able to reach millions of Pinners with apps that make Pins actionable and help people take their ideas offline.

With these new options for advertising and with Pinterest making steps to make its platform more efficient for marketers and users alike, it’s just another reason why businesses shouldn’t ignore the power of Pinterest.

The other reason? Traffic.

Here are some recently-shared stats from Pinterest:

The stats:

• 50 billion Pins collected by people onto more than 1 billion boards
• 80% of traffic comes from mobile
• Each year, Pinterest serves more than 1.5 trillion recommendations
• Recipes: Over 1.7 billion recipe Pins
• Shopping: Every day nearly 2 million people Pin product rich Pins
• Articles: More than 14 million articles are Pinned each day
• ⅔ of all the content people Pin is from a business’ website

If you’re a business, the last few points here should make you take notice – two million product pins daily and the fact that two-thirds of all content is from a business website. Hard to argue with that proportion.

Are you utilizing Pinterest to its full potential? Let us know in the comments.

Image via Pinterest