pinterest new feature Archives

Pinterest is a content sharing website in its own league, attracting users from all demographics to pin images on virtual boards in the hope they will one day use the craft ideas in real-life.

In recent months, however, the service has taken a more direct approach to shopping, allowing users to access online stores for the items they liked and pinned. Now, Pinterest has announced a new feature.

Soon, users will be able to snap pictures of real-life objects and shop for the desired items online. Filed under ‘camera search,’ the tool is only one of the many shopping options that Pinterest has revealed on Tuesday at its San Francisco headquarters.

According to Pinterest’s president Tim Kendall, this new search feature is meant to allow pinners act on their offline shopping urges with an online tool.

Available in the coming months, the camera search will allow users to snap a picture of an item they see in real-life (like that crazy pair of shoes you saw this morning on the subway) and find similar products on Pinterest that you can buy.

The service has an extra offering for its iOS pinners called ‘visual search’ which is a part of automatic object detection. This tool allows people to use photos as search queries by identifying products within a pin’s image.

To use the option, just tap on the search icon located on the upper-right corner of a pin, which opens a browsing window for detected items. You can also manually drag a rectangular cropper if you want to make a more specific search.

Automatic detection has begun rolling out to iOS users today and the gradual launch will reach all pinners within the next few weeks.

“Shopping with Pinterest is meant to be that bridge between getting inspiration and making it part of your real life,” said Ben Silbermann, CEO of Pinterest.

That gap has been infamously recognized by users who have thousands of clothes items in their virtual closet but who have rarely thought of buying them in real-life.

With more than 100 million monthly active users, Pinterest reported about $100 million in revenue in 2015. The company’s employee count is also on the rise, with about 800 workers in Paris, London, Tokyo, Berlin, and Sao Paulo, in addition to the Pinterest’s San Francisco headquarters.
Image Source: CNET

Pinterest is becoming the latest social network who is adding sponsored, or as they call them, Promoted Pins, to their boards. Twitter has started promoting tweets and Facebook has its sponsored posts and now Pinterest is running Promoted Pins in Beta and is expected to launch the feature to advertisers at the beginning of 2015. This means that January 1 is also when you’re going to start seeing Promoted Pins.

Pinterest has around 70 million users, and while it may not be as large as Facebook or Twitter, it still makes a very promising advertising platform. As is expected, Pinterest is trying their best to make this feature as user-friendly as possible and to sugar-coat it as much they can. They wrote on their blog:

“At Pinterest, our mission is to help people discover things they love and do those things in real life. Millions of people use Pinterest every day to save the inspiration and things they need to carry out plans and pursue their interests. This is a huge, unmatched opportunity for marketers today—while some platforms look to the past or present, only Pinterest focuses on the future.”

The Promoted Pins feature was launched in Beta eight months ago for advertisers. Pinterest announced that the feature will be open to all of their U.S.-based partners starting January 1.

Pinterest also shared with the world a few things that they learned from the beta version of Promoted Pins. Apparently, Promoted Pins perform just as well and sometimes even better than the organic pins. According to Pinterest, brand advertisers achieved a 30% bump in earned media from their campaigns with Promoted Pins! Promoted Pins get repined around 11 times, which is the same as organic ones.

Another thing Pinterest has revealed happens with Promoted Pins is that they perform long after a campaign ends, which, when you think about it, makes sense as Pins don’t have an expiration date and can get repinned forever.

Also, it seems that auction-based Promoted Pins are quite successful, but Pinterest revealed it they are still working on this feature and want to make sure we get it right before we roll it out to all businesses.

So, what exactly does this mean for the Pinterest user? To be honest, we expect to see more pictures of brand names mixed in the lot. That nice, juicy hamburger you’ve been searching for on Pinterest, well, it’s going to come to you, but with it so will some brand name burgers.

Aside from Promoted Pins, Pinterest is also launching The Pinstitute, which is a place where advertisers learn how to connect with Pinners and make their presence less obvious. If this sounds like analytics and feedback, it’s because that’s what it is, under a different name. We welcome this, because we feel that it anything that is going to keep our boards nice and clean is a good thing.

What are your thoughts on Pinterest introducing Promoted Pins?

Pinterest Camera Search Allows Online Shopping for Real-Life Items

Pinterest Introduces Promoted Pins, Users Should Expect More Adverts

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