Digital News: Pinterest Quietly Launches Paid Marketing with “Rich Pins”
Businesses and marketers rejoice: Pinterest quietly launched their first major paid media this week. The media, ironically called “Rich Pins”, aim to improve a pin’s functionality while generating revenue for the social network.
The launch is monumental for all stakeholders. Since its rise in popularity nearly two years ago, Pinterest has avoided offering advertising, leaving many brands to ask for more and start-ups to develop work around marketing opportunities. The release of Rich Pins is a welcome addition for many.
Rich Pins for the Consumer
So, what exactly are Rich Pins?
Rich Pins help provide additional content around a pin. Details such as ingredients, prices, availability, and reviews are displayed with the pin to easily provide information to the viewer. A great example of a Rich Pin is for a recipe. A Rich Pin for a recipe would include the necessary ingredients, cooking time, and serving size all below the pinned image of the food.
The end goal of Rich Pins for the consumer is to make content easier to view and make decisions against, such as “should I make this recipe?”.
Rich Pins for the Business
Similar to what Facebook has done with their “Sponsored Stories”, Pinterest has avoiding calling their Rich Pins ads and instead calls them”more useful pins”. In fact, they avoid using any mention of “ad” or “paid” in their announcement and product info page. However, this is exactly what they are.
Pinterest partnered with various brands who were interested in reaching additional consumers on the social platform. They wanted something tied to the content already on Pinterest and something social, not the typical advertising other websites offer.
Rich Pins were the answer. Blending in with existing content, these pins provide additional information that makes them more eye-catching and useful for consumers. The result is an expectation of higher engagement with these ads. Rich Pins also include the brand’s logo underneath the pin, increasing brand recognition of the content pinned. Additionally, Pinterest launched boards specific to brands taking part in Rich Pins, including product pins, recipe pins, and movie pins. This means a further increase in exposure for the brand.
Brands Taking Part in Rich Pins
The brands launching Rich Pins thus far includes:
Products-
Anthropologie, Asos, BHLDN, eBay, Etsy, Free People, Home Depot, Modcloth, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Overstock, REI, Sephora, Shopify shops, Shop Terrain, Sony, Target, Urban Outfitters, Walmart, Wayfair, Zulily
Recipes-
101 Cookbooks, Better Homes and Gardens, Bon Appetit, Chobani, Country Living, Delish, Epicurious, Good Housekeeping, Leite’s Culinaria, Martha Stewart Living, MyRecipes, Naturally Ella, Nestlé Very Best Baking, Real Simple, Simply Recipes, Skinny Taste, The Girl Who Ate Everything, The Kitchn,What’s Gaby Cooking, Whole Foods Market, Woman’s Day
Movie-
Flixster, Netflix, Rotten Tomatoes
How to Take Part in Rich Pins
For businesses to take part in Rich Pins, they must get approval from Pinterest and work with their website developers to ensure desired meta tags around the image can properly pull the desired information into the Rich Pin.
For further information click here.
– Bryan Nagy
So how much do rich pins cost? If it’s advertising, don’t you have to buy it?
Not necessarily, and there’s question as to what the “approval” process for rich pins entails. Given you are pinned on Pinterest’s product pages, and it appears only a handful of more recognized brands are displayed, it’s likely that everyone who wants Rich Pins for now won’t be approved. Many social platforms launch beta ad programs with select brands at a cost, and it is believed this is one of them. In the future, this will likely morph into a paid media opportunity for other businesses (consider how Facebook ads used to work with how it works now).