Opening up Pinterest Adds Search Advertising

Pinterest introduced its first search ad offering on February 1st , almost seven years after the company launched. The new search functionality comes via Kenshoo, an advertising vendor in Pinterest’s marketing partner program. It’s sold for three KPIs: impressions, clicks on promoted or buyable pins and engagement, which on Pinterest means someone saving a pin to their own board.Adding search gives Pinterest the ability to tap into another part of that buying behavior — searching with the intent of a purchase (whether the user realizes it or not). Nearly all of the searches on Pinterest aren’t brand searches, global head of partnerships Jon Kaplan said. So Pinterest will now give some advertisers the ability to show ads against keywords and for shopping campaigns through Pinterest’s search.

With Pinterest looking to continue to grow into a must-have tool for advertisers, it’s begun building more and more products to capture all parts of a person’s buying behavior. Pinterest users often come to discover new products and ideas, and the company has always generally done a good job of pitching marketers that Pinterest ads do a good job of building awareness, as well as getting users to convert to an eventual sale once they get to a product.

“Now we believe we’re at a place where we understand how people are leveraging the platform and using it to plan their lives,” said Michael Akkerman, head of Pinterest’s marketing partners program.

Pinterest’s search has been built from the ground up to process visual search, with algorithms built to scan and understand what’s in an image. Akkerman says that nicely positions Pinterest for mobile-first search budgets.

To learn more about Pinterest Adds Search Advertising, follow this link business.pinterest.com