To Pin Or Not To Pin: Is Moving Advertising Dollars Towards Pinterest Worth It For Your Brand?

For those of you that don’t know what Pinterest is, stop reading this blog and go sign-up! For those of you that kept reading, Pinterest is a website founded in 2010, which allows people to collect ideas for both projects and interests. Users are able to “pin” or house their ideas to specific boards they have created within their unique profile. Users can pin anything from their favorite home cooked recipes to their favorite outfit combinations with something as simple as a search of a keyword.

Recently, Semiocast released a study showing that Pinterest has now reached over 70 million users and more than 70% of those users live in the U.S. According to All Things D, Pinterest is currently valuated at 3.8 billion with funding worth $255 million. For those of you advertisers who have not used Pinterest in your marketing efforts, you should hop on this train quickly.

According to Ad Age, Pinterest launched its first paid ads with a group of brand marketers last month, but is already setting out to pursue long-tail ad dollars through self-service auctions. This self-serve auction based system, is aimed towards small to medium sized businesses with pricing on a cost-per-click basis.

In the past, Pinterest was asking for $1 million to $2 million commitments from their advertisers. “The ultimate price over time will be determined, as all auctions are, by how much competition and demand there is,” said Don Faul, Pinterest’s head of operations.

With this new self-serve system, ads will appear in a Pinterest search based on unique keywords advertisers decide to bid on. An example of some of these search keywords could be “maxi dresses” or “printed tops.” These examples, could also be applied to certain categories, where users can browse a wide array of content, such as “women’s fashion” or “travel.”

Pinterest: To Pin or Not to Pin

When it comes to bidding for ads within individual categories, bids will be based on the specific category itself and not on a keyword level basis. Pinterest has yet to determine frequency for promoted pins, but we do know that advertisers can target users based on city, gender, and even device.

Who is pinning?
80% of users are female while only 20% are male. 84% of female pinners are still active after their fourth year of interacting with Pinterest. (Source: RJMetrics)

Pinterest: To Pin or Not to Pin

What are women pinning?
Within the past year, an active female user has made 158 pins. Food and Drink categories make up 20% of the top pined categories followed by DIY & Crafts coming in at 12%. (Source: RJMetrics)

What’s Next?
This graph trending YoY shows that female users get more active with time while men slowly start to fall off the charts. In year one, the average female user posts 42 pins, but by year 4 she is upward towards 152 pins.

With social media growing more and more each and every day, it is definitely worth considering putting advertising dollars towards Pinterest. Isn’t just the amount of people you are able to reach convincing enough? Pinterest is here to stay, but for those of you still not convinced, get out there and see what all you can create!