Pinterest Announces First Ad Units

On Thursday, Pinterest announced that it will test its first ad units.  This is a big stepping stone for the company which has achieved very little revenue to date.   Pinterest has already successfully engaged and retained a substantial user base who are accustomed to not viewing any advertising.  It will be interesting to see how Pinterest integrates advertising and if it receives any backlash.  CEO, Ben Silberman also noted that there would be no banner advertising nor an inundation of promos on the site – the goal is not to interrupt the user experience.    Instead, they will have paid pins related to user interests and clearly marked as promoted.  Since Pinterest has a lot of data on its users, it will be interesting to see how effective its advertising can be and whether it can generate substantial ad revenue.  One would think they would be able to effectively target and that it’s a long time coming for them to introduce advertising on the site.    Initially the site is only going to introduce ads on search results and category feeds.  I think this is a good idea to test the waters and see user reaction to advertising and to be very cautious on the rollout.  It looks like Pinterest has plateaued in growth through desktop uniques (3% growth from last year to 26M users ), but has generated enormous growth in mobile from 9M uniques in January to 24M uniques in July.  Time will tell if Pinterest will take the Facebook route and have heavy advertising throughout its site.    

Source: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/pinterest-will-test-first-ad-units-promises-transparency-152530