Pinterest ad­vert­ising: all you need to know about Pinterest ads

Pinterest is a social network with a focus on the pub­lish­ing and dis­tri­bu­tion of images. Users can attach image col­lec­tions with de­scrip­tions to virtual pinboards. A con­tri­bu­tion to Pinterest is called a pin. Other users can like, share, and comment on pins. The Pinterest network has been online since 2010 and has become in­creas­ingly popular ever since. Now, users can not only publish images and image col­lec­tions, but they can also attach short videos to the pinboard.

Pinterest has com­munit­ies for a number of different topics. You can find interest groups for everything from crafts, interior, cooking, how-to guides, han­di­crafts, or certain hobbies and interests. This is par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing for ad­vert­isers, as they can easily track down their target group and reach out to them within their network. In order to begin Pinterest ad­vert­ising, you will need a company account. In this article, you will learn which ad­vert­ising options Pinterest offers and how to use them.

An essential feature of Pinterest is that the image de­scrip­tion links to the original source of the image. Each pin can therefore generate traffic to websites. This not only offers added value to the user when browsing for ideas, but it also generates clicks for bloggers and companies who want to use Pinterest for marketing purposes.

According to Omnicore Agency, Pinterest has 250 million monthly users. Due to the numerous cat­egor­ies, Pinterest is a suitable ad­vert­ising platform for a number of different in­dus­tries. Since many use Pinterest for sug­ges­tions, in­spir­a­tion, or for dis­cov­er­ing new products, ad­vert­ise­ments can be in­cor­por­ated re­l­at­ively naturally without them being perceived as intrusive. Ad­vert­isers can refer to a suitable product when offering tips and sug­ges­tions; for example, suitable materials for a crafting project, in­gredi­ents for a recipe, or a purchase option for an item in a fashion photo.

Pinterest offers five different ad­vert­ising formats. Choosing the one that is best suited to your purpose largely depends on the type of product you want to advertise.

The type of Pinterest campaign you choose depends on your company’s goals. Even though most companies aim to increase sales, they don’t all do it the same way. So, before you choose your campaign, make sure the campaign has a clearly defined purpose: do you want to spe­cific­ally increase brand awareness? Or do you want to attract traffic to your website? Then choose the right campaign type that best suits your ob­ject­ives. With Pinterest, you can choose from three different types of ad campaigns:

• Traffic campaign: This campaign takes Pinterest users to a different website in order to generate traffic and to make potential customers aware of the linked site.
• En­gage­ment campaign: This type of campaign aims to increase user in­ter­ac­tion. The user should be en­cour­aged to click more often and to view more products.
• Awareness campaign: The awareness campaign is best suited to those that want to increase the awareness of a par­tic­u­lar brand.

How much a Pinterest ad costs and how these costs are estimated, comes down to the type of campaign you have selected:

• Traffic campaign: Cost-per-click (CPC) – costs are incurred every time the link leading to the target website is clicked.
• En­gage­ment campaign: Cost-per-action (CPA) – costs are incurred for each action performed by in­di­vidu­al users on a sponsored pin (such as a click on the pin itself or on the like or re-pin symbol of the pin).
• Awareness campaign: Cost-per-mile (CPM) – costs are incurred for every thou­sandth page view.

The exact amount of the above costs is de­term­ined by an auction system. Whether or not your ad­vert­ise­ment is actually played out depends on the bids of your com­pet­it­ors. There are no constant fixed prices and the price differs depending on the ad campaign.

As with offline auctions, all companies place a bid for an ad­vert­ising space. This means, that each company would indicate the price they would pay for an ad­vert­ising space and then compete against other companies for that position. Which ad­vert­ise­ment wins the bid depends on the following three factors:

• The amount of the bid of the ad­vert­iser
• The prob­ab­il­ity that the ad would lead to the ad­vert­iser’s desired result – this takes the selected campaign into account
• The quality of the ad and its relevance to the target group

This means that it is not only the bid size that matters but also the relevance of the ad itself and how it matches the ad­vert­ising space in question.

Example:

Four ad­vert­isers compete for an ad­vert­ising position on a fitness coach’s social media channel and each place different bids. This fitness coach spe­cial­izes in ex­plain­ing to their users which exercises are best done on which home fitness device and how to make their training even more efficient.

1. Ad­vert­iser, cosmetic brand – £0.13 per click
2. Ad­vert­iser, sportswear – £0.08 per click
3. Ad­vert­iser, sport nutrition – £0.11 per click
4. Ad­vert­iser, sports equipment – £0.07 per click

The highest bid will be rejected because it does not match the content of the fitness coach’s social media channel. The ad­vert­iser probably used an un­suit­able category when creating the ad.

The second bid will be short­l­is­ted because it relates to the fitness coach’s content. This can be seen in their selection of sportswear pins and also the sportswear brands they offer are re­cog­nis­able.

The third bid will probably be rejected if there has been no mention of sport nutrition on the fitness coach’s social media channel.

The fourth bid directly relates to the fitness coach’s content as every pin features sports equipment. The prob­ab­il­ity that a user will click on the pin is very high. This means that the fourth ad­vert­iser has a good chance of winning the bid, despite the fact that they are not the highest bidder. However, it is also possible that the second and even the third bidder could win the ad space since their content is relevant and they are offering sig­ni­fic­antly more money than the fourth ad­vert­iser. The highest bidder, on the other hand, would lose the auction as their content is not them­at­ic­ally suitable.

Pinterest offers a number of pos­sib­il­it­ies to edit images or add hashtags to them. Images with some short text can also help push your ad­vert­ising message. However, with Pinterest, the images are of much greater im­port­ance than any text. The images used should therefore be of high quality and must fit to the overall im­pres­sion of the board.

It is not just the creation of quality images and videos that is important for an effective pin, there are also a few basic ground rules to keep in mind:

Dos

• Select the subject carefully and pay attention to the com­pos­i­tion of the image. What can be seen in the photo? An image with an in­ter­est­ing design is more likely to be noticed by users.
• Test, test, test! The best way to learn what works best for a brand is to ex­per­i­ment.
• Tell stories that arouse emotion. The consumer should learn to associate positive feelings with your brand. On the one hand, this can be de­term­ined with target group surveys, and on the other hand with neur­omar­ket­ing.
• Publish ad­vert­ise­ment-free content on a regular basis. Regular pinning strengthens both your brand’s presence within the social network and customer loyalty. By pub­lish­ing ad­vert­ising-free content regularly, you prove to other users that you are a valuable part of the Pinterest community, which, in turn, creates trust. Make sure that you have a good balance between pins and ad­vert­ising content.

Don’ts

• Don’t set the maximum price too low when placing a bid. Although setting a low maximum CPC can be quite tempting, if the bid is too low, your ads will not be placed and your ad­vert­ising campaign can fall flat.
• Don’t use Pinterest for spam-like self-ad­vert­ising. According to Pinterest, ad­vert­ise­ments should be relevant to the users and of high quality. With this in mind, don’t create multiple rows of pins in the shortest possible time that only serve a sales purpose. Excessive and open self-ad­vert­ising is un­ac­cept­able and could result in your account being blocked.
• Don’t always post congruent content. Be careful not to solely post content based on your products, but also use a mix of different content from time to time. Pinterest users want to see a variety of content and not just product texts – otherwise they would simply visit an online shop as opposed to Pinterest.
• Don’t pin randomly. You shouldn’t deduce from the above advice that you should simply create random pins from various subject areas. Make sure your pins are them­at­ic­ally related to your content and your business.