At Pinterest Presents, the company’s annual global advertising summit, Pinterest argued why this year is a prime opportunity for brands to partner with the social media platform.
The online event included appearances from famous faces including Heidi Gardner, Aisling Bea, Rashida “Sheedz” Olayiwola, and Harvey Guillén and unveiled a slate of new and updated products and features.
To talk about the suite of new tools and products announced by the company for both advertisers and consumers, Mediaweek caught up with Pinterest’s Managing Director of Australia and New Zealand, Melinda Petrunoff.
“We are launching a really robust roadmap that we’re super excited about,” said Petrunoff. “Really enhancing not only existing products, but we’re launching new products and that’s creating a great opportunity for advertisers to lean into. We’ve got a very commercial audience that comes with full intent. That’s very different to our competitors.
“We know we’re going after a very competitive global advertising market, but leaning into what makes us unique and different is the key for us. We’re not your typical social platform. We’re not here to lean back and get entertained. People who are coming to Pinterest are definitely leaning in. They have intent. What makes it useful for advertisers is they have commercial intent, they are there to find ideas and take action.”
Pinterest’s Premiere Spotlight on search and home feed
With the company’s new ad product, Premier Spotlight, brands can now exclusively own placements on Pinterest’s search and home feed to promote their campaign to assist in maximising visibility with consumers. Petrunof said that Pinterest was thoughtful in protecting the user experience by offering premium content that is relevant to them.
“It’s our first high-volume ad product for advertisers to be able to reach Pinners at scale. It’s a premium ad unit in terms of placement and reach. We first tested it on our search feed, which is one of our highest engaged pages on our platform. Mecca was the first advertiser to test with that, followed by L’Oreal who tested the the first beta with the homepage. It’s now available to all advertisers and in Australia, and both homepage and search page are sold as one opportunity.”
Showcase ads and Quiz ads
Pinterest also announced two new ad units, Showcase ads and Quiz ads.
“One of our key priorities is to make sure that across the platform, we’re driving engagement and we are driving relevance,” Petrunoff said. “Both of those new ad units absolutely aligned with that priority.”
Showcase ads is an interactive ad solution that allows users to preview and explore a brand’s content by swiping through branded images. The tool aims to help consumers discover things like seasonal looks, mini recipe books, or unique features of a car.
With Quiz ads brands can create a quiz that aims to lead consumers to more personalised ideas. With this data, they can move consumers toward a purchase.
“Showcase ads give advertisers the ability for users to go deep into their content,” said Petrunoff. “Country Road Group were the first advertiser to beta test that product and they did a beautiful job.
“Quiz ads are more about creating an entertaining ad unit, and the ability for brands to make it fun on Pinterest by creating a quiz. Equally, that allows them to provide personalised recommendations to users on the platform.
“It’s prompting users to answer questions typically done in a fun or an entertaining way, but then driving people to understand and give personalised recommendations for their products.”
Pinterest Presents
Creative Studio
Pinterest’s Creative Studio tool is currently in early testing. It works by giving brands a quick way to generate lifestyle imagery for product pins. Brands will be able to add their Pin link, select the prompts that match their need, and Creative Studio will then generate a selection of custom background images.
According to Petrunoff, even the Pinterest team was surprised and delighted by this announcement: “The intent is to really give brands a speedy way to create and to build their product pins on the platform. It’s tapping into the vast library of owned content that Pinterest has to generate those custom background images and help brands activate their ads on the platform quickly. That will go live in the US as they test it before we roll that out globally.”
Making Pinterest a shopping destination
Pinterest Presents saw the announcement of new features that will aim to help users discover more shopping destinations.
To assist with this, Pinterest’s mobile deep links will assist in quickly directing users to a specific page in a retailer’s mobile app, making it easier to shop for products after clicking on a shopping ad. Direct links take people straight from a Pinterest ad to a retailer’s website, reducing the steps it takes for users to go from discovering a product to checkout.
Pinterest is also expanding its integration ecosystem with two new integrations for Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Adobe Commerce native applications to all monetised markets. These integrations aim to allow merchants to manage their Pinterest product catalogues and set them up directly within the applications they already use for Salesforce or Adobe.
Petrunoff believes that these products align with the goals of the business by helping to show stronger and faster conversions.
“More than 50% of people are coming to the platform ready to shop, and our goal is to make Pinterest a shopping destination. For the retailers that are already uploading their product catalogues, we know that they are generating faster growth on the platform. Extending these e-commerce integrations with Salesforce and Adobe is creating a seamless way for retailers to continue to be able to upload catalogues. In some of the results, we’ve seen around a 30% increase in attributed checkouts for those retailers that have uploaded catalogues.
“If we want to create a destination shopping platform, we need to make it as seamless as possible. Not only are we expanding our E-commerce integrations, but we’re also adding new products to make that journey through the funnel much faster. We are launching two new products, mobile deep links and direct links to help that shopping experience be much better.”
Collages
The new Collages feature announced at Pinterest Presents is designed to help users personalise ideas and refine their vision by leveraging the platform’s visual technology. Collages enable users to cut objects out of a Pin and combine them with other cutouts to create an interactive collage of ideas. Brands can get involved by updating their catalogues so users can add their products to Collages.
Petrunoff expressed how this new tool gives users the ability to cut out objects from pins on the platform, pull those together, and create ideas.
“That is currently in early testing, and it’ll be rolled out globally soon to all users. That’s going to be a very cool application. It particularly lends itself so well to our fast-growing Gen Z audience.”
The future at Pinterest
When asked about what’s next for the brand following this big set of announcements, Petrunoff said that Pinterest is leaning into what makes it unique.
“There are three key things that we are focused on to make sure that we will be successful in making ourselves different. The first is making sure that the platform is engaging and relevant for all of our users. That’s so important.
“Improving that funnel for shopping is our second priority. We want to make sure that not only are people coming in and finding inspiration, but they’re able to take action.
“The third is proving value to our advertisers. With these new innovative products, the early testing is showing that they’re delivering strong results. The measurement solutions that we’re expanding are proving that we are driving value, and that is critically important.”
Petrunoff continued to explain that Pinterest has typically been known as a very strong upper funnel platform with strength in awareness, but the additional measurement solutions now at the bottom of the funnel are helping the company to prove its value. This is done through methods such as conversions API to help prove conversions on the platform with first-party data. Pinterest has also done a third-party data partnership with Live Ramp to help advertisers in testing cleanroom solutions.
“These are two very important initiatives that help us improve the bottom of the funnel. Ultimately, with all of these new ad products that we’re announcing, it’s delivering on our opportunity to continue to drive strength throughout the funnel. That lends itself beautifully to our goal of becoming that shopping destination. We have to be able to allow brands to have their products discovered and we want to make it seamless for our users to take action and make purchases.”
See Also: IMAA Female Leaders of Tomorrow: Pinterest’s Melinda Petrunoff