This week, Pinterest released three new ad tools for marketers and advertisers on business profiles. The new releases are customer list targeting, visitor targeting and lookalike targeting. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google already use these ad targeting tools, but it is a new upgrade for Pinterest, proving they are a social platform that is here to stay.
By the end of this month, in order to expand the target audience, all advertisers will be able to target ads on Pinterest to people who have visited a brand’s website, used its mobile app or shared their email addresses with a brand. Advertisers can place a Pinterest conversion tag across their sites, which will help it follow users onto Pinterest and better target their ads.
The retargeting has a variety of possibilities for business. For example, the partner can choose to target people who have landed on their homepage (page visit tag), signed up (signup tag) and/or added an item to the cart (custom tag), and exclude people who have already checked out (checkout tag).
Retargeting customers is a big opportunity for businesses to make sales with Pinterest users. Someone on Pinterest is more likely to be in a shopping mindset than someone on Facebook or Twitter, according to internet trend oracle and venture capitalist Mary Meeker. Meeker’s latest “Internet Trends” report claimed that 55 percent of people in the US who use Pinterest do so to shop or find products versus 12 percent of those on Facebook and Instagram and nine percent of those on Twitter.
The change has already had promising results in tests, Frank Fumarole, product manager at Pinterest reported. Click-through rates increased up to three times for visitor retargeting and up to 63 percent for lookalike targeting, while reaches increased up to 30 times, according to Fumarole.
The lookalike targeting tool will allow advertisers to find users who have not visited their site, but share similar characteristics. While this feature exists on Twitter and Facebook, it will work different on Pinterest. Instead of locating users with similar demographics, it will find users with similar pin boards. For a clothing brand, they might locate Pinterest users with boards for fashion, clothing, or beauty.
Businesses who work with a Pinterest Marketing Developer Partners will be able to target these audiences by the end of the month.
Many predict this update will increase Pinterest’s valuation. Pinterest most recently (March 2015) was valued at $11 billion. Since then, the service has said it has more than 100 million monthly active users, and according to leaked documents, the company was projecting to have more than 150 million users by the end of 2015. Their next valuation will certainly be higher than the last.
As Pinterest continues to grow its user base, it allows them to invest more money into tools like these. Pinterest is clearly becoming a more competitive player in the social network world. If you think your business could take better advantage of this platform, contact GiraffeBuilder to discuss your social media plan and how we can grow your business.
