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.
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