Pinterest’s “promoted pins” have been appearing on the site since fall 2013, but until now they’ve only shown up in search and in specific category feeds.
Today all that changes, as the company has just announced an expansion of the ad initiative. Now, users will begin to see promoted pins pop up in their home feeds, the most visible area of the site.
“Your home feed is the first thing you see when you come to Pinterest, so we want to make sure you’re always welcomed with Pins that are beautiful, relevant and tasteful – and that includes Promoted Pins. Of course, if you don’t like a Promoted Pin, you can always hide it from your feed and tell us why you didn’t like it. We’ll use your feedback to improve what you see in the future,” says Pinterest’s Annie Ta.
Pinterest has been cautious in rolling out their ad product. Not only did they take well over a year before moving it to the most-trafficked element of the service, but it was just last month that the company announced an imminent expansion to all partners. For most of 2014, promoted pins were only available to select partners.
At the time, Pinterest dropped some stats that make a pretty compelling case for the efficacy of promoted pins, from a marketer’s perspective.
“Brand advertisers achieved about a 30% bump in earned media (free impressions!) from their campaigns,” says Pinterest Head of Partnerships Joanne Bradford. “That’s from people who saw a Promoted Pin and thought it was good enough to save to one of their own boards. Engagement is strong— the average Pin is repinned 11 times, and that remains true for Promoted Pins (if not higher).”
“Promoted Pins perform long after a campaign ends. Since Pins are evergreen and last forever, we often saw an extra 5% bump in earned media in the month following the end of a campaign,” she adds. “Brands both in and out of our core categories found success. From financial services to food to auto, brands from a wide array of industries saw results. Auction-based Promoted Pins (CPC) are seeing success, too. Many of our self-serve beta partners are seeing major gains in traffic and impressions. We’re still making tweaks to the product and want to make sure we get it just right before we roll it out to all businesses.”
Third-party data confirmed that Pinterest’s promoted pins are really good at getting clicks. According to eMarketer data, 30% of U.S. Pinterest users between the ages of 13 and 64 said they clicked on promoted pins at least weekly
Image via Pinterest