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.

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?