Last Thursday, Pinterest held its Presents upfronts-like event in Sydney. A raft of agency and client-side marketers decamped to a cinema in Moore Park’s Entertainment Quarter on a sunny Sydney morning to hear all the platform’s news.
The top line should be familiar to anyone working within the digital space—Pinterest excels for discover and brand awareness, but is rapidly and continuously adding tools to improve its effectiveness at the bottom of the funnel.
As usual, there were some very Pinterest flashes. The event was titled Operation: It’s Possible had real-life security guards and an hour-long mainly in-character video starring Jameela Jamil announcing the key pieces of news. It isn’t often an upfront presentation can hold you attention for its duration, but this one did.
There was a feeling from some B&T spoke to after the show that it felt very much like a global affair, rather than a local show—that isn’t necessarily bad, just different to many of the other upfronts-style events taking place at the moment. That was perhaps brought into sharper focus when Pinterest was discussing its focusing on the health and wellbeing of its users.
“Three years ago, we set out to do what many thought was an impossible mission,” said CEO Bill Ready, “put the emotional wellbeing of our users first and deliver better performance for advertisers at the same time. We believed it was possible and now, we’ve proven it.”
Pinterest, he continued was meeting this “unique moment in time” because it is designed as a decision engine and reflects the way that Gen Z shops with a focus on visual media beyond text-based interfaces.
“Pinterest is a pioneer in visual search… our recommendation engines have gotten increasingly better at introducing new audiences to new products and the latest trends. Unlike many other places online, Pinterest doesn’t just show more of the same things. It’s like having a stylish best friend or personal shopping assistant… Our audience has reached all-time highs with well over half a billion people on the platform. And Pinterest is where Gen Z goes to shop—they are now more than 50 per cent of our platform and our most engaged audience,” added Ready.
“We always talk about B2B marketing and how to do it in different and entertaining ways,” said Phoebe Keogh, head of media and connections at The Hallway.
“I really feel like that’s what they have attempted to do. We’ve been working really closely with Pinterest, so nothing that was shared today was a surprise. But it’s clear. They’re responding not only to users but brand and advertiser feedback.”
Trends Tool expansion & creator announcement
Perhaps the most intriguing announcement was an expansion to Pinterest’s trends tool. The platform regularly discusses its ability to predict, rather than react to trends.
Now, it has expanded access to its prediction platform, giving advertisers access to new data. You can filter trends by age (as in, how old the trend is, not the users), time and place, see what has been trending over the last 90 days with a brand’s most-engaged users and predict future trends up to 90 days in advance. Pinterest will also showcase trends handpicked by its team of editors.
“I’m really excited about the trend tool and getting to see behind the curtain,” said Triere Anthony, a business director at This Is Flow.
“I thought that was interesting,” said James Belias, WPP Media’s head of social. “Other platforms have been doing really well with getting trending moments and insights into the hands of advertisers… We’ll see how they gain traction with our teams. When you play around on Pinterest, you can see the AI and how algorithmically sensitive it is in responding to the signals you’re giving it.”
Creators, a hot topic at many of the different platforms’ upfronts this year, was also touched on by Pinterest. The platform said it has a “dynamic mix” of more than a million Pinterest creators around the world including stylists, chefs, travellers, designers and make up artists.
The platform mentioned a new creator directory. This gives brands and agencies the chance to find creators by content vertical or region. You can also upload product to an existing library of creator content.
“When the stat came up about there being over a million creators on Pinterest, that felt quite emergent. That’s exciting,” said Keogh.
Pinterest also took the chance to take aim at some of the other large platforms about their work with influencers. Malik Ducard, Pinterest’s chief content officer had this to say: “I’ve loved seeing the rise of influencer marketing. It’s powerful but today it can often just look like paid spokespeople hawking products. The industry is currently facing an influencer authenticity deficit. To succeed in this environment, your brand needs champions with credibility.”
“When brands make a decision about working with influencers and creators, they are thinking about authenticity. We have the Influence team led by Shivani Maharaj and certainly authenticity, advocacy and the combination of both are front and centre,” said Belias.
“I don’t think that’s particularly different on Pinterest, it’s a nice angle for them to play towards. I hope they do well out of it. I guess the inauthentic influencer work you seen might be from other parts of the industry.”
AI & Automation, Visual Search
Pinterest announced expansions to its suite of AI and automation tools. Pinterest Performance+, including a new image cropping and resizing feature to help
“It can cut your campaign setup time in half,” Pinterest said during the talk.
“No more endless searching for interests or adding keywords. Upload your creative and let our AI handle your targeting… Pinterest Performance+ campaigns outperform traditional campaigns in nearly 80 per cent of A/B tests. Advertisers who use Pinterest Performance+ catalogue sales have seen more than a 20 per cent reduction in CPA.”
“What they said about Pinterest Performance+ is interesting and I liked that they pointed out you can have a mixture of manual and machine because I always caution the throwaway lines around ‘Let it just optimise’. It’s really important when you get to a media buying perspective to have a mixture of both and you’re able to see the results you’re getting from both sides and allowing the human to feed the machine and vice-versa,” said Keogh.
Those quoted numbers are impressive, to be sure. Though, of course, like all numbers given at upfronts, they’re probably best approached with a grain of salt.
Pinterest also made some updates to the way ads appear in feeds whilst users are searching for ideas or products. It’s currently testing ways for products to be served within the top slots of search results and related Pins and to be “placed there ahead of your competition”. It described them as a “game-changing” way for brands to appear on the platform and there would be more to share soon.
Changing Funnels, Social Ban, Ease of Work
A final few quick and important things. During the show, one of the characters in the film had this to say on the marketing funnel.
“Talking about the purchase cycle as a funnel is kind of date. It’s not really that simple. It’s a dynamic journey.”
Is it?
“We talk about the decision making journey changing, the reality is that it’s getting faster. What I love that Pinterest offers here is that you can go from ideas to shopping in the platform. But there are also the stats to show that’s what users are doing,” said Keogh. “You can be discovering an idea and then seamlessly move to a purchase which is something we’ve always wanted to do.”
“Yes and no. The media world is more fragmented. You go into different spaces at different times and with different mindsets. When everyone is grabbing your attention, you’re going to be moving around a little bit more as opposed to it being a funnel,” said Anthony.
As we mentioned above, Pinterest has been vocal about its identity as the positive, nice place on the internet. It has been listed as one of the companies potentially included in an expanded version of the child social media ban by the eSafety Commissioner. However, one would be pushed to say Pinterest has taken more proactive steps than other platforms—whether they’re classically social media platforms or not, the distinctions are broad these days—to protect its users.
While the social ban wasn’t specifically mentioned, buyers believe its stance does make Pinterest stand out.
“It’s topical. From our experience, clients do see Pinterest as a good place to advertise. There’s never been any brand safety problems with the platform,” said Belias.
One of the more interesting parts of the film was from Pinterest’s chief revenue officer, Bill Ready.
“We’re working to become your single best business partner for business growth. We know that comes down to a lot more than product innovation. It’s about the experience you have working with us and our tools… We know it should be easy and frictionless to work with us and we know in the past that it hasn’t been. We’ve taken that feedback seriously,” he said.
That raised some eyebrows among our Australian buyers.
“They really do work quite well with brands in terms of understanding their commercial goals. Locally, I’ve heard a lot about the joint business ventures they’re doing,” said Keogh.
“I haven’t found they’ve been difficult to work with,” said Anthony. They’ve been really open.”
“We discussed it afterwards—we have an amazing relationship with the Pinterest guys,” said Belias. “Some of the people they have are among the best in their peer set. Maybe that was geared towards other agencies.”
So did Pinterest’s upfronts change the way buyers will use the platform?
“I wouldn’t necessarily say today’s content is going to materially change [anything]. But it’s a hard one because I’ve been working really closely with Pinterest recently to understand what they’re doing across the full funnel,” said Koegh.
“There’s a place and a space for Pinterest and I’m excited to see how we can use them moving forwards,” said Anthony.
“I don’t think it’s going to change it because I’d like to think that our teams are talking full-funnel. We have been supporting diversification more broadly. We want to make sure that what we recommend for our clients is always the right thing for a client,” said Belias.
