Expect advertising revenue on Pinterest to increase, as the platform has just launched additional social commerce features within its Shoppable Pins format for select industries.
New Product Pins
In a recent blog post, Pinterest has announced some new features and functionality for brands and advertisers who are currently leveraging its Shoppable Pins advertising format.
Most importantly, product pins will now be able to display up-to-date pricing as well as inventory information directly. They will also now be able to drive traffic back to an external checkout page – meaning brands and affiliates can point customers back to their product pages directly.
Image Source: Pinterest
Product Recommendations
Advertisers who are supporting Style and Home products will also be pleased to know that the platform has also launched a shopping recommendation section under pins of those categories. Now, any user who conducts a search for pins that fall under either home décor or fashion will get a list of product recommendations. Shoppers who click on these recommendations will then be directed to a feed full of similar styles – optimized in such a way that only in-stock items will be displayed.
Image Source: Pinterest
Shopping Shortcut Feature
In addition to the two features above, iOS users will also be able to enjoy taking advantage of a new shopping shortcut feature, which allows customers browsing Home and Style pins to shop directly from their Pinterest feeds. This is done by simply holding down the shopping tag on the desired pin and then being given immediate access to purchase that item.
Image Source: Pinterest
This feature was actually tested in Q3 of 2018 to select retail sites before becoming more widely available, and Mobile Marketer reports that the test resulted in an increase of clicks going to product pages by 40%.
Pinterest has claimed that Android users will soon be getting access to these features as well.
Pushing Social Commerce Forward
Social commerce has been a major focus for Pinterest in recent years, with its audience being amongst one of the highest-engaged groups of social shoppers. More than half of them are making purchases more than four times the rate of any other digital platforms.
Despite the fact that Pinterest has a smaller amount of active users compared to giants like Facebook or Instagram, it’s a heavily influential platform, with 50% of its users admitting to making a purchase after seeing a Promoted Pin.
Additionally, and perhaps most surprisingly, Pinterest is also an excellent source of referral traffic, trailing only behind Facebook when it comes to social referrals, and experiencing an increase of 30% since last year.
Watch & Learn
While this update is only specific to the Home and Style industries right now, the image-curating platform typically tends to cater to its most lucrative industries first before becoming more widespread.
Even though Pinterest is clearly a niche social medium, it’s an interesting one to keep an eye on from a marketing perspective, due to its nature of innovating quite often in comparison to some of the other social networks out there. Plus, as mentioned above, there’s just something about Pinterest’s user base that is unlike any other social platform when it comes to making purchases. They are highly engaged.
In summary, if you’re a Home or Style brand, or an affiliate looking to capitalize more on offers in those categories, you’ll want to start taking advantage of these features right away. If you’re not, it’s still worth making a note of these because they will either eventually be made more widely available on Pinterest’s platform, or there will be similar functionality released by one of its competitors that you will be able to leverage.
Patience and experimentation will be paramount as we move into the end of 2018 and the beginning of a new year.