Pinterest Announces First Ad Product: Promoted Pins

What's This?

By Lauren Indvik2013-09-19 19:18:21 UTC

It's been a long time coming: Pinterest, the heavily funded image and video-sharing network, announced Thursday that it is going to begin experimenting with paid advertising.

The product is called "promoted pins," and it borrows from Twitter's and Facebook's ad products of the same name. Essentially, businesses will be able to pay to show certain pins at the top of search results and category feeds.

Here's how founder and CEO Ben Silbermann (pictured above) describes it:

Tasteful—No flashy banners or pop-up ads.

Transparent—We’ll always let you know if someone paid for what you see, or where you see it.

Relevant—These pins should be about stuff you're actually interested in, like a delicious recipe, or a jacket that's your style.

Improved based on your feedback—Keep letting us know what you think, and we'll keep working to make things better.

For our first test, we'll promote a few pins in search results and category feeds. For example, a pin for a Darth Vader outfit from a costume shop might be promoted in a search for “halloween”. Nobody's paying for anything yet—we want to see how things go and, more than anything, hear what you think.

Silbermann says Pinterest is only exploring promoted pins with "select businesses" for now, but we can expect this to be rolled out more broadly in the near future.

Note: An earlier version of this story said that businesses will be able to promote pins at the top of users' newsfeeds. Businesses will only be able to promote pins on search results and category feeds "for now," a spokesperson says.

Image: KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/Getty Images

Topics: Advertising, Business, pinterest, Startups