Pinterest Adds Conversion Tracking, Audience Targeting to Promoted Pins

A few select Pin­ter­est adver­tis­ers have gained access to some pow­er­ful new tools that let brands tar­get exist­ing cus­tomers on the image-shar­ing net­work and mea­sure how many con­sumers are pur­chas­ing prod­ucts after click­ing on Pro­mot­ed Pins. Visu­al...

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

A few select Pin­ter­est adver­tis­ers have gained access to some pow­er­ful new tools that let brands tar­get exist­ing cus­tomers on the image-shar­ing net­work and mea­sure how many con­sumers are pur­chas­ing prod­ucts after click­ing on Pro­mot­ed Pins.


Visu­al book­mark­ing net­work Pin­ter­est says it is adding audi­ence and con­ver­sion track­ing fea­tures to the Pro­mot­ed Pins it began test­ing in May with a small group of adver­tis­ers in the U.S. that now include Banana Repub­lic, Puri­na, and Nespres­so.

In a blog post, Pin­ter­est says it plans to help those adver­tis­ers under­stand how their ads are per­form­ing and to make Pro­mot­ed Pins, which, like the name implies, are pins pro­mot­ed by busi­ness­es, more rel­e­vant to users. It will also update its Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy on Octo­ber 19 at least in part as a result of these changes.

Pin­ter­est says it will “improve” Pro­mot­ed Pins by report­ing infor­ma­tion like how often ads are show­ing on Pin­ter­est and how many con­sumers are pur­chas­ing prod­ucts after click­ing on Pro­mot­ed Pins.

That means adver­tis­ers may add pix­els to their web­sites that let Pin­ter­est mea­sure pur­chas­es that have come from view­ing or click­ing on Pro­mot­ed Pins. Fur­ther, Pin­ter­est says it may use that data to “cus­tomize” users’ expe­ri­ences on Pin­ter­est. Pinterest Promoted Pins

In addi­tion, Pin­ter­est says it may allow adver­tis­ers to place pix­els or sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy on the Pro­mot­ed Pins them­selves, which it says will allow adver­tis­ers to col­lect infor­ma­tion on how well the Pro­mot­ed Pins are doing.

Adver­tis­ers may also share what Pin­ter­est calls a “hash” of iden­ti­fiers such as email address­es, which can then be matched with users so Pin­ter­est can show tar­get­ed Pro­mot­ed Pins to them.

Accord­ing to a Pin­ter­est rep, addi­tion­al brands in the test include Expe­dia, Gap, Gen­er­al Mills, Kraft, Tar­get, Walt Dis­ney Parks and Resorts, and Ziploc.

Not­ing “the results thus far have been real­ly encour­ag­ing,” the rep writes in an email, “We are focus­ing on three areas with Pro­mot­ed Pins right now. 1) Ensur­ing the Pro­mot­ed Pins are a great part of the Pin­ner expe­ri­ence. 2) Under­stand­ing what’s impor­tant to our part­ners and how best to man­age cam­paigns and mea­sure the results and 3) improv­ing our abil­i­ty to tar­get ads.”

The rep adds, “These updates will allow us to pro­vide com­mon indus­try stan­dard adver­tis­er tools like con­ver­sion track­ing, which we believe will make Pro­mot­ed Pins an even bet­ter part of the dis­cov­ery expe­ri­ence on Pin­ter­est.”

Pin­ter­est says it wants to show Pro­mot­ed Pins that are rel­e­vant to users and from brands they have shown inter­est in. To avoid show­ing “ran­dom or dis­tract­ing” Pro­mot­ed Pins to users, Pin­ter­est hopes to incor­po­rate infor­ma­tion shared by adver­tis­ers.

Users who don’t want their infor­ma­tion used or to be tar­get­ed can turn off Per­son­al­iza­tion with­in their account set­tings.

When asked about expan­sion plans for its Pro­mot­ed Pins test, the Pin­ter­est rep says, “We are focus­ing on a test in the U.S. for now.”


Do you think these addi­tion­al fea­tures will help you bet­ter tar­get con­sumers and increase sales on Pin­ter­est?

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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