Tag: PINTEREST

Pinterest Rolls Out Promoted Video Ads In Feeds and Search Results

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Right on the heels of updating its Lens feature for visual search of recipes, Pinterest today started rolling out Promoted Video ads in users’ feeds, search results, and within Related Pins section. Similar to Facebook’s video ad units, Pinterest’s video ads are also autoplay and muted by default. As with when it first debuted Promoted Videos last August, Pinterest is sticking to its mobile-only approach and only surfacing the video ads in its mobile apps.

What Brands Need To Do
Pinterest announced last October that it has reached 150 million monthly active users, up 50% from last year thanks partly to a substantial increase in male signups. While its user base still lags behind its rival social platforms, its unique visual aesthetic has proven popular with certain consumer segments, such as home decor, food, and fashion. While Pinterest may be a latecomer to the auto-play video party, the way it incorporates video ads into the mobile user experience should provide some add-on value for brand marketers looking to catch the eyes of Pinterest users.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Pinterest Lens Now Supports Visual Search For Recipes

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest has updated its visual search and discovery feature Lens to make it more useful for food enthusiasts to find recipes and dishes. The new update enables “full dish recognition” for Lens, which let Pinterest users snap a picture of a particular dish, such as quesadillas or fried chicken, and get corresponding recipes for that dish, along with similar-looking dishes. Previously, users can use Lens to get recommended recipes when they snap pictures of the ingredients they have. Pinterest rolled out Lens to all U.S. users in March, and it is integrated with Samsung’s voice assistant Bixby to power visual search on the new Galaxy 8 phones.

What Brands Need To Do
This update for the Pinterest Lens feature should give its search platform a boost and make it more useful for Pinterest’s over 175 million users, who, according to the company, spent 5% more on groceries than the national average. Pinterest have long been a popular platform among marketers with its quick product roll-out, coupled with its emphasis on search and scale. This Lens feature puts it in an advantageous position of developing consumer-facing visual discovery tools, which are increasingly gaining traction as a new way to understand user intent and collect contextual data.

With the quick advancement of machine learning and AI-powered solutions, we are starting to see examples of brands primarily using the camera as an input source of the mobile user interface.  This trend should provide some inspiration to brands looking to update their digital user experience to be more intuitive and convenient for mobile users.

 

Source: AdWeek

 

Pinterest Updates Object-Recognizing Lens Feature With QR Code Support

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest launched an object-recognizing, image-search Lens feature earlier this year, which enables users to use their smartphone cameras to scan real-world items and get related results on Pinterest. On Tuesday, the company updated the in-app feature to include a Visual Guides function meant to help users narrow down the objects captured by their cameras and figure out what the users really want to search for. Moreover, the social scrapbooking site is also adding QR code support to the Lens feature, allowing users to use it to scan basic QR codes and be redirected to either a Pinterest page or any third-party webpage. A 3D-touch shortcut is also added to the iOS Pinterest app to allow for quick access to this Lens feature.

What Brands Need To Do
This update for the Pinterest Lens feature should give its search platform a much-needed boost and make it more useful for Pinterest’s over 175 million users, whose interests around specific topics such as fashion, design, home decor, and food have kept the social platform competitive against the likes of Facebook and Snap.

With the quick advancement of machine learning and AI-powered solutions, we are starting to see examples of brands primarily using the camera as an input source of the mobile user interface and leverage images to learn about user intent. Snapchat is a prime example of leveraging the camera to engage with mobile users. This trend should provide some inspiration to brands looking to update their digital user experience to be more intuitive and convenient for mobile users.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Pinterest Launches Mobile Visual Search Tool In Public Beta

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest has launched its Lens virtual search tool on its mobile app as a public beta test. Starting today, Lens allows iOS users to point their smartphone cameras at anything, and Pinterest’s A.I.-powered algorithm will automatically pick apart the objects in an image and categorize them down into foods, animals, clothing, or even patterns like hexagons. Then users will be presented with a slew of pins featuring identical or visually similar items. Building on the visual search function it previewed last year, Pinterest says Lens will also come with a “Shop The Look” feature that isolates each fashion items, from hats to jeans to shoes, in an image that surface shoppable pins featuring each of those pieces.

What Brands Need To Do
According to a recent study by Millward Brown, 83% of active Pinterest users have purchased a product because of something they saw on the site.As Pinterest continues to build out its ecommerce features, brands interested in social commerce, especially those whose target audiences overlap with Pinterest users, should leverage them to boost direct sales by adding support for the “shopping cart” and experimenting with Buyable Pins.

Moreover, with the quick advancement of machine learning and AI-powered solutions, we are starting to see examples of brands primarily using the camera as an input source of the mobile user interface and leverage images to learn about user intent. Snapchat is a prime example of leveraging the camera to engage with mobile users. This trend should provide some inspiration to brands looking to update their digital user experience to be more intuitive and convenient for mobile users.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Pinterest To Optimize Recommended Pins With Deep Learning

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest has started using deep learning to improve the relevance of its Recommended Pins, which shows up when a Pinterest user pins an image to their boards to suggest visually similar posts that they may be interested in as well. This is built upon Pinterest’s existing use of machine learning in visual search, a feature the site first started testing in 2015 and later expanded to more users last summer.

What Brands Need To Do
The use of deep learning — which generally means training artificial neural networks on existing data and teaching them to interpret new data — is something that is emerging as a key industry trend in consumer tech. From the fast development in autonomous cars to AI-powered home gadgets like Amazon’s Echo lineup, artificial intelligence of varying degrees is being integrated to a wide range of products to enable smart automation and personalization solutions. For brands, this means it is time to identify the customer data you leverage to create or partner with tech provider to develop AI-powered, personalized customer experiences.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Pinterest Launches Showcase To Help Brands Present Their Best Sides

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest has introduced a new feature called Showcase to help brands on its platform leave a strong first impression on customers visiting their profile pages. Rolling out to business accounts, this new feature enables brand managers to choose up to five customizable Pinterest boards and Buyable Pins in the US to feature as a rotating carousel on top of their profile pages.

Why Brands Should Care
A new report from our sibling Mediabrands agency Magna found that social and search captured the bulk of digital dollar growth in 2016, and social media is expected to rise to the top of advertising spending in market share by 2017. Pinterest stands to benefit from this ad dollar boom, as it has long enjoyed its reputation among social networks as a “Sales Conversion Powerhouse.”

This new feature should offer brands a way to curate their best content collections and present them in a prominent manner to attract the attention of potential customers and hopefully lead to conversion. As social platforms like Pinterest continue to build out their ad products and add brand-friendly features, brands advertisers need to learn to leverage these tools to reach their desired audiences .

 

Source: Marketing Land

Pinterest Debuts Autoplay Video Ads In Explore Tab

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest is ramping up video ads as it starts testing autoplay video in the Explore section on its website and mobile apps. When one autoplay video ad plays to completion, Pinterest’s video player will automatically loop into other videos from that brand. The addition comes just a few months after the social scrapbooking site introduced click-to-play video ads on mobile. Brands such as American Express, Home Depot, Macy’s, and Sony Pictures are among the first to try out Pinterest’s autoplay video ads.

What Brands Should Do
Last month, Pinterest announced that it has reached 150 million monthly active users, up 50% from last year thanks partly to a substantial increase in male signups. While its user base still lags behind its rival social platforms, its unique visual aesthetic has proven popular with certain consumer segments. While Pinterest may seem a bit late to the auto-play video party, the way it incorporates the continuous video playback into the mobile user experience should provide some add-on value for brand marketers looking to catch the eyes of Pinterest users.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Pinterest Adds More Third-Party Measurement & Data To Ad Platform

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest is beefing up its Marketing Partners program, which the company launched last year, by integrating with several more third-party measurement and data companies. With the addition of measurement companies like Adjust, AppsFlyer, Apsalar, Kochava, and Tune, advertisers can now use these third-party tools to track the reach and impact their campaigns on Pinterest.

On the marketing data side, Pinterest is adding companies including Epsilon, Experian, Salesforce’s Krux, Acxiom’s LiveRamp, and Neustar to help advertisers apply their own data, such as a list of customer emails, to targeted ads on Pinterest. The social scrapbooking site introduced email-matching targeting to its ad product in June.

What Brands Should Do
Pinterest has long enjoyed its reputation among social networks as a “Sales Conversion Powerhouse.” A recent study by Oracle Data Cloud showed that Promoted Pins drive 5x more incremental in-store sales compared to campaigns on other platforms. As Pinterest continues to build out its ad products and make its platform more brand-friendly, advertisers now have more options to reach their desired audiences and keep track of their campaign progress. Brands with an overlap between their target audiences and Pinterest users should take advantage of the integrated third-party tools to improve their campaigns.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Scripps Network Signs On As Pinterest Media Partner

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Scripps Networks Interactive, the owner of Food Network, HGTV and Travel Channel, has signed on as a media partner for Pinterest’s new “Explore” media channel, which aims to create a way for publishers and brands to reach users with videos and multimedia posts. Pinterest is also reportedly working to bring food and travel-oriented video network Tastemade on board.

It is worth noting that both Tastemade and Food Network publish to Snapchat’s  content portal Discover, which functions in a similar way as Pinterest’s Explore . Therefore, it is no surprise that Pinterest is working to strike similar deals with content creators.  

What Brands Should Do
Last week along with the launch of Explore, Pinterest also announced a new content initiative called Pin Collective that aims to connect brand marketers with top content creators on its platform. With 150 million monthly active users, Pinterest boasts a unique aesthetic that is very popular among certain consumer segments such as fashion lovers, foodies, and home decor enthusiasts, making Scripps the ideal content partner for its platform. Together, the two content marketing initiatives should give brands new channels to reach their desired audiences.

 

Source: AdAge

Pinterest Ramps Up Content Advertising Products To Court Brands

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest is launching a “creative ecosystem” called Pin Collective to connect brand marketers with top content creators on its platform. Brands of all sizes and budgets can leverage this new tool to produce content that is optimized for Pinterest’s unique format and user behavior.

In addition, the social scrapbooking site is reportedly testing a new “Explore” media channel for publishers and brands to reach users with videos and multimedia posts. Similar to the way  publishers currently distribute their content and ads on Snapchat’s Discover channels (which is about to change), this new media channel on Pinterest will allow brands to put ads against publisher content.

What Brands Should Do
Last week, Pinterest announced that it has reached 150 million monthly active users, up 50% from last year thanks partly to a substantial increase in male signups. While its user base still lags behind the biggest social platforms, its unique visual aesthetic has proven popular with certain consumer segments such as fashion lovers and home decor enthusiasts. The two content marketing initiatives should give brands new channels to reach their desired audiences, and brands with an overlap between their customers and Pinterest users should give them a try.

 

Source: Pinterest Business blog & AdAge
Header image is a promotional image courtesy of Pinterest Business blog