11th March 2022
POV: Pinterest Presents
Background
Pinterest held its second annual ‘Pinterest Presents’ global advertiser summit this week, using it to unveil a host of new commerce solutions and platform updates.
Details and Implications
Big new features revealed included multiple shopping enhancements, promoted updates and improvements to the Pinterest Trends and Idea Pins, which is the Pinterest version of Stories.
The most obvious update was the creation of a new personalized shopping page within the app called ‘Your Shop’. This is designed as a place for people on Pinterest to ‘browse, shop and buy’ in a way that is tailored to their own individual tastes. Products and brands will be made available within Your Shop based on the users activity and preferences on the platform. Your Shop is currently in a limited beta for US users before being rolled out to all US users later this year. This update was paired with an upgrade to Pinterest’s checkout features, with the introduction of in-app checkouts for Shopify merchants – also in limited beat in the US. The combination of the two upgrades is designed to get Pinterest users tapping more products instream and ultimately buying more through the app.
Pinterest also revealed a new Shopping API, which combined with the above features it hopes will encourage more brands to sell through the platform by streamlining the process for connecting catalogues to the platform and creating shoppable Pins.
To help marketers better understand what content is driving views on the platform, Pinterest has also upgraded Pinterest Tools to include real time search data and given them more granular audience tools and personalized trend recommendations. These new features will be first rolled out to businesses in the US, Canada and the UK, with additional countries added later this year.
The upgrade to Idea Pins will make it possible for advertisers to promote their pins in the App. Pinterest hopes this will encourage more brands to partner with creators for branded content deals as the creator will not only be able to tag products in their Ideas Pins, but now the brands will be able to put ad dollars behind those Ideas Pins to drive even more views and engagement.
Summary
Social media platforms continue to move from advertising to commerce and Pinterest, which overall has struggled against the growth of larger social media platforms, has not been an early adopter in this space. It will be hoping that the launch of these new commerce focused options will help to revive its fortunes and reverse a recent decline in Monthly Active Users.