While most companies take a shove-it-in-your-face kind of attitude when it comes to advertising, Pinterest has taken a decidedly different approach.
After 18 months of beta testing a new self-serve platform, Pinterest is opening a tool that allows brands to buy ads to all small and midsized brands in the U.S.
The social worksheet site is also raising the number of interest-level targeting options from 30 to 420. Before, users were only able to buy ads based on 30 broad user interest (such as food, D.I.Y or fashion). Now, however, targeting can be ultra specific, so marketers can buy ads against phrases and keywords like “vegan food,” “fairy tree houses,” or “cheese castle.”
Pinterest reports that marketers who have spent at least $1 per day advertising on their platform see a 20% increase in clicks on their posts. That number includes businesses that have run Promoted Pin (the name of the new Ads Manager) for at least a month beginning in July.
“Pinterest knows more about the interest of its user than any other platforms,” said Nipoon Malhotra, Pinterest’s ad products lead. “This is a very different from a graph that represents something you browsed a month ago.”
Indeed, the specialized boards that Pinterest allows users to create generates a lot of business for specialty and niche companies. While research has shown that 85% of clients tend to live within a five-mile radius of a particular business, tools like Pinterest and its new Promoted Pins Ads Manager could see a serious increase in clicks and businesses through targeted marketing for remote products.
The tools now available to smaller companies had been available to large, bulk-buying campaigns, and come with the ability to buy ads with a credit card, as opposed to more complicated methods.
As Pinterest has steadily been rolling out new advertising products, they have been seriously growing its revenue stream. Malhotra said that the company’s revenue grew five-fold between 2014 and 2015. The ability to finesse their campaigns on the site has made it an increasingly attractive platform to advertisers.
