Pinterest, the popular image sharing-focused social network long dogged by questions about its ability to generate revenue, is moving towards monetization with a site-wide rollout of its Promoted Pins program on January 1.
Promoted Pins, a Pinterest-flavored approach to sponsored content that allows brands to pay to boost their own brand-centric Pins to other Pinners’ feeds, was launched in beta form for select brands back in May.
The initiative, by Pinterest’s own estimation, has been a rousing success; an announcement on their official blog says Promoted Pins perform “just as good and sometimes better than organic Pins”, doing well enough to compel them to give the program a full launch. Furthermore, Pinterest says their own research gives brands participating in the Promoted Pins beta a thirty percent increase in earned media, the number of pinners saving a Promoted Pin to one of their own boards.
Pinterest is hoping a package of tools for brands — Promoted Pins amongst them — will convince marketers to embrace the fast-growing social network, eager to generate revenue a year on from a $225 million round of Series E funding and $3.8 billion valuation.
Other offerings in Pinterest’s marketing umbrella include a workshop for would-be Promoted Pin adoptees known as the Pinstitute and an analytic dashboard, launched in August, that allows marketers to stay in the loop on the performance of each of their Promoted Pins.
