Pinterest explores advertising with "promoted pins" test strategy

After much speculation, last Thursday, September 19th, the ever so popular digital bookmarking platform Pinterest announced its foray into advertising. Pinterest's Co-Founder and CEO Ben Silberman made this highly anticipated announcement via Pinterest's "Oh, How Pinteresting!" blog, both to publicize the new experimental strategy, as well as to dispel worries of a tarnished customer experience filled with flashy banner ads. Silberman's claim is that the new promoted pins will be:

• Tasteful, aka no banners or pop-ups
• Transparent so that promoted pins are clearly differentiated from regular user pins
• Relevant based on search queries or user content
• Improved based on user feedback

As both a Pinterest fan and a devoted pinner, I am torn. The passive, "pin-observer" side of me is not looking forward to any interference as I continue to use the Pinterest platform. To me, Pinterest always has been and should continue to be a visual content-sharing site; not another e-commerce outlet. On the other hand, the 25.6 million unique monthly visitors present a significant monetization opportunity for a growing company that accounts for 23% of all social media-driven e-commerce sales, despite being a significantly smaller social network than Twitter or Facebook. It is also a huge win for many retailers, not only because of the opportunity to highlight their products, but also because of the reaffirming fact that Pinterest users make the largest purchases among customers referred to e-commerce sites by social media - $93 in average order value to be precise. 

Analysts are commending Pinterest with this effort, saying it's fine as long as the paid content is integrated tastefully and does not "stick out like a sore thumb." As one industry analyst stated: "Pinterest is not a charity, it's a business...They have to monetize their site one way or another". 

Of course, I agree with this and am optimistic that Pinterest's strategy will be a successful business model for the future. However, I still wonder whether it will be possible to integrate promotional pins without any detriment to the currently seamless and user-driven experience of the site. Only time will tell.