Tag: PINTEREST

Pinterest Ventures Into Native Ads With “Pin Picks”

Posted on by Lab Team

Earlier this week, Pinterest launched its new “Pin Picks” collection that aggregates under its official account. Built in conjunction with content partners, the new collection could signal Pinterest’s interest in curating content and native advertising.

At the moment, the Pin Picks section offers a broad variety of topics and categories to delve into, including a special guide for Halloween, for which Pinterest is working with creative partners like eHow, Funny or Die, and YouTube star Michelle Phan to surface pins and provide costume inspiration throughout the month.

How Social Media Crashed The Emmy Party

Posted on by Lab Team

Even though the Emmys typically have the lowest ratings among the big four awards show, it is still a live-viewing-required “TV event” that brands and advertisers crave. And this year, instead of being content with mere celebrity tweets and updates, three major social media sites jumped in on the fun to bring an integrated experience to the show.

On the red carpet, Facebook used a comically large tablet, dubbed the “Mentions Box”, to let celebrities take questions from Facebook users and record their answers on it. The reply videos were then posted on the Emmy’s Facebook page. Meanwhile, a Twitter-branded zip-line camera swooped over the red carpet and pre-show, with the footage beamed to NBC’s Twitter account. Additionally, a Pinterest page set up by NBC was updated in real time with related content, with a lower third caption occasionally shown throughout the telecast—the first time Pinterest has been integrated into a major awards ceremony. Clearly, these platforms are trying to create an engaging “second screen” experience for viewers.

Pinterest Finally Adds an Important Social Feature

Posted on by Lab Team

At long last, moms on Pinterest can swap their secret family recipes via private messages! Building upon its “send-a-pin” feature, Pinterest has finally added a long-overdue messaging function. This is not the first time a social media platform has tried to appropriate the one-on-one conversational feature of messaging apps, as Facebook keeps pushing its messenger app and Instagram starts testing Bolt, and it certainly won’t be the last. Any feature beneficial to building a community among connected users should be of high priority for every social media platform.

Pinterest Launches New Mobile Search

Posted on by Lab Team

Pinterest today debuted a new search feature with mobile utilization at its core. To search through the over 30 billion pins on the site can be a chore, particularly if users are looking for something specific – and indeed, those individual pins are now loaded with links to purchase, location tags, related pins and other information. In the interest of facilitating discovery, and thereby clickthroughs on those links, Pinterest has launched “Guided Search” for Android and iOS. A user enters a topic, and pins appear with suggestions for how to narrow the search. The goal is to facilitate natural discovery throughout the search process; if a user wants hair styles, they’ll be suggested things like bangs, hair length, and the like. With Pinterest looking for ways to prove that its platform drives revenue, guiding users to what they’re looking for on mobile is, and now will continue to be, a key feature of the platform. 

Pinterest Readying Ad Sales

Posted on by Lab Team

Pinterst is a key target for digital advertisers, and now the company is getting ready to fully roll out ads on the platform. The social network will take a Twitter-like approach of “almost-native” ads, where Promoted Pins will look identical to regular pins, save for a “Promoted Pin” disclaimer across the bottom of the ad. Pinterest began testing on this platform last fall with select brands such as Four Seasons and TRESemmé, but the company will be rolling out a full fledged campaign this spring. The rollout will be “soft,” and will predate a Video Pins video rollout in June. Promoted Pins can be targeted, and posted in 32 different categories like “Animals,” “DIY & Crafts,” and others. As well, Promoted Pins will be geo-targeted, allowing advertisers to hone in on boutique brands and shops. Expect to see these as soon as early April.

Target Announces Pinterest-Based Online Storefront

Posted on by Lab Team

Called the “Target Awesome Shop,” Target’s new e-commerce storefront is powered by Pinterest.  Refreshed daily, it’s an amalgamation of pins from Target’s own online store and users on the social networks, showcasing user’s favorite pieces and driving engagement. The idea is to create a curated experience with data from trending products that combines analytics and data from social networks, as well as the Target site itself, to create a best of both world scenario. It’s worth keeping an eye on, particularly to see whether the social network, for all of its plaudits, can actually increase sales figures. 

A Pinterest Pin Is Worth More Than A Tweet

Posted on by Lab Team

According to marketing and analytics firm Piqora, who just completed a nine-month study of more than 1,000 brands in Pinterest, each pin is worth about 78 cents in sales, a 25% year over year increase. Each pin drives two site visits and six page views, and is repinned about 10 times. The average pin is 100 times more viral than a tweet. And brands with a rich pin integration see an 82% jump in repin/pin ratio. These stats are important for brands to consider, particularly in light of PInterest’s recent API release. The virality of pins, in combination with their sales drive, means that if you’re not already taking the site seriously you need to consider its worth as high as – if not higher than – even Twitter. 

Pinterest Launches API; Announces New Partners

Posted on by Lab Team

At long last, Pinterest is launching an API that will allow pins to be embeddable across the web. The first partners for the API have already been announced, and include a host of big names: Zappos, Walmart, Disney, Nestle, Random House, and Hearst. It means that Pinterest will try to ramp up its traffic referral data – it’s current second after Facebook in that category – while making itself more useful to sites and brands to post pins and other social details across different networks. It also means more marketing to spend against these strong links between sites. It’s an important more, one that will likely see Pinterests’ already high relevancy only increase. 

Pinterest Pilots Promoted Pins

Posted on by Lab Team

Pinterest has begun piloting promoted pins, which act as billed. The paid ads appear as pins with a “promoted pin” callout and an info icon that identifies the brand and reasoning for the placement. None of this is terribly surprising for the social network valued at 2.5 billion. More interesting is the question of monetization and whether their pricing model will capitalize on the great deal of referral traffic.  Letting users transact on the platform could also be lucrative, but then again, how would that make them any different from the Fancy?

Pinterest Introduces Article Pins & “Read It Later”

Posted on by Lab Team

Pinterest is making continued design moves and improvements. They’ve announced the launch of an updated “article” pin type that’s designed to expand Pinterest’s reach beyond photographs and linking to e-commerce sites. It turns Pinterest into an article-sharing service, with information like headlines, titles, and descriptions embedded into the pin itself. Today’s changes mean that extra metadata will appear automatically. It’s also introduced a “read it later” service in conjunction with the embeddable article pins, positioning the service as a potentially useful bookmarking tool for looks, websites, and interesting pieces; it could also provide incentives to advertisers who provide targeted offers. For instance, if a user has been pinning articles about running, a shoe brand might point the user to its athletic-themed pins, which also link to its e-commerce outlet. It’s a potent combination that might work wonders in the very near future.