Pinterest is making a big push into the advertising market, something that has been popular among many. After testing ads for a few months with its partners, the media sharing platform is introducing Search Ads with a plan to open it up to a wider marketers.
"We're excited to introduce Search Ads on Pinterest: a new way to connect with people searching for your products and services," said head of global sales John Kaplan in Pinterest for Business Blog on January 31st, 2017. "We're rolling out a full suite of features, including Keyword and Shopping Campaigns that are shown in search results, along with powerful new targeting and reporting options."
One of the reasons people use Pinterest is to search for products and ideas. Everything from big life moments to what they might cook for dinner that night, explained Kaplan.
Previously, advertisers could run ads using keywords and they will be shown throughout the website alongside relevant contents. With Search Ads, ads will appear right after people type in their search queries.
On its initial roll out, Pinterest is selling its ads directly. But later, Pinterest plans to copy Google by using a digital auction system on a pay-per-click basis. But unlike Google that is mostly host text-based ads, Pinterest that is popular for images, will primarily use images as ads.
Pinterest's move in introducing Search Ads, according to ad executives, could be because Pinterest has struggled to define itself. Advertisers on the platform has been urging Pinterest to improvise its ad products, and many were complaining about its speed in adapting to changes, mainly since the ad marketplace is dominated by Google.
To market Search Ads, Pinterest is partnering with Kenshoo, an Israel-based online advertising company that operates ad buying software used by many search advertisers. With the partnership, Pinterest is aiming to provide retailers the ability to deliver feeds than can be used to stream product-specific ads in real time.
With Search Ads that are basically visual search ads, Pinterest is seeing itself unique. And it sees this as an opportunity to enter the market that is already occupied by giants.
Pinterest hopes that Search Ads could soon open a whole new set of advertisers and specialty search agencies - which have spent money on Google for its search ads, as well as ads from Microsoft's Bing search engine.
"We think we have something that is differentiated," said Kaplan. "We see this as a very big new opportunity."
With 2 billion searches a month, Pinterest has reached 150 million unique monthly visitors. With more than half of them coming outside the U.S., the company aims to put its search feature into a good use, and that is to make it a source of revenue.
The Search Ads update has the potential to make the platform even better for advertising. And if Pinterest can do it right, it has the potential to thrive in a market where tens of billions of marketers are actively spending their money.