Pinterest Increases Appeal To Marketers
Site Introduces Pin Tracking
Pinterest is already one of the most productive social networks for advertisers. Its enviable demographic of high-spending 25-34 year old women, the fact that the site has higher traffic referral percentages than many of the largest social media platforms combines, and its consumerist and aspirational ethos all combine into a perfect storm for marketing. Alongside Instagram, Pinterest is gaining attention for the ease with which attractive content can be displayed and distributed in contrast with the increasing difficulty of getting the word out on established networks like Facebook – and as everyone knows, when it comes to marketing on social media content is king.To make life even easier for those advertisers, the site recently announced that it will be launching new conversion tracking and audience targeting features.
Pinterest intends these new services to make it easier for marketers to track how Promoted Pins are affecting their business, and how better to craft those Pins to appeal to target Pinterest users. They will now be able to add a tracking pixel to those Promoted Pins to get a better idea of who’s looking at them and to collect information on how successful a particular Pin is.
The tracking pixel will also allow advertisers to keep better tabs on click-throughs from the site, letting them see just how much of their traffic and purchases are coming from specific Promoted Pins. Beyond this the feature will allow businesses to follow not only which Pins encourage users to click through to purchase, but also which Pinterest users move to purchase after only viewing a Pin.
In addition to this tracking technology, advertisers will be able to share a ‘hash’ – an anonymised scramble of data – of some identifiers (such as email addresses) which Pinterest can match with users on the site and then use to show targeted Promoted Pins.
Users can, of course, exempt themselves from any of this by fiddling with their privacy settings. The company also used its statement on these new features to reiterate its support for ‘Do Not Track.’
The tracking pixel will also allow advertisers to keep better tabs on click-throughs from the site, letting them see just how much of their traffic and purchases are coming from specific Promoted Pins. Beyond this the feature will allow businesses to follow not only which Pins encourage users to click through to purchase, but also which Pinterest users move to purchase after only viewing a Pin.
In addition to this tracking technology, advertisers will be able to share a ‘hash’ – an anonymised scramble of data – of some identifiers (such as email addresses) which Pinterest can match with users on the site and then use to show targeted Promoted Pins.
Users can, of course, exempt themselves from any of this by fiddling with their privacy settings. The company also used its statement on these new features to reiterate its support for ‘Do Not Track.’
The announcement comes alongside Facebook’s recent declaration that it is relaunching Atlas, the advertising platform which the social media giant bought from Microsoft in 2013. Atlas essentially acts as an intermediary between the data which Facebook holds on its users and external advertisers; it basically allows marketers to use Facebook’s data for advertising outside of the site. It’s mobile-orientated, allowing advertisers to target demographics by not only their Facebook activity but also their behaviour on their mobile device – what apps they have installed, for example.
By comparison, Pinterest’s latest development is pretty rudimentary stuff – nothing that Twitter et al. haven’t been doing for some time already. Promoted Pins are still only available to a select group of advertisers in the US, and they say that won’t be expanded just yet. Considering the backlash against Twitter’s dabbling in people’s feed for the sake of the advertising dollar, this kind of cautious experimentation is a sensible way to proceed.
By comparison, Pinterest’s latest development is pretty rudimentary stuff – nothing that Twitter et al. haven’t been doing for some time already. Promoted Pins are still only available to a select group of advertisers in the US, and they say that won’t be expanded just yet. Considering the backlash against Twitter’s dabbling in people’s feed for the sake of the advertising dollar, this kind of cautious experimentation is a sensible way to proceed.
Douglas is an English Literature graduate who has written about everything from music to food to theatre, now a content creator for Social Media Frontiers. No topic too large or too small. Follow him @DouglasAtSMF.
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Pinterest Increases Appeal To Marketers
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Tuesday, September 30, 2014
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