Pinterest Makes Promoted Pins Available to All Advertisers

After the success of its Promoted Pins, Pinterest has decided to take a huge leap forward in 2015. The image-based social site is opening up Promoted Pins, making it available to all advertisers in the U.S.

Initially introduced in June 2014 to only a select group of advertisers, Promoted Pins offers advertisers a way to run pins that target users based on age, gender, location, and interests.

On December 28, 2014, Pinterest announced in an official blog post that they were “ready to bring this amazing opportunity to everyone.” What’s so amazing about Promoted Pins?

• According to the post, brand advertisers achieved a 30% bump in earned media from Promoted Pins campaigns.
• Since pins are evergreen and last forever on the site, promoted pins were still working for the brand, offering up to 5% in earned media even after the end of the campaign.
• Brands from all types of different industries saw positive results
• Many beta tester advertisers saw major gains in traffic and impressions

A Growing Yet Subtle Advertising Approach

Although we saw Pinterest as well as other social media sites like Instagram dip their feet into the advertising pool last year, we’re noticing a trend. Native advertising seems to be a big focus for these two image-based sites as they build out their advertising revenue. Native ads basically being ads that do not look like ads, but like regular, user-generated pins or posts. This is probably what has contributed to the huge success of these Promoted Pins in the last several months (Betty Crocker holiday cookie recipes can camouflage better in a feed of holiday content vs on users’ Facebook feeds.)

Additionally, users have the option to filter out ads, if they do start to notice the subtlety. By clicking on the “X” in the lower right corner, users can hide or provide feedback or reasons why they want to remove it; users can even learn more about it!

Growing Gains

Pinterest is currently valued at $5 billion dollars and has raised more than $760 million in capital to date. Although steps have been slow and gradual, it looks like 2015 may be the year it gains revenue and a leg up on competitors like Facebook and Twitter.

With their native advertising initiatives in full swing, we can see Pinterest being a great place for brand advertisers to reach 70 million users in a way a user wants to be reached: subtle, targeted, and relevant.