Pinterest joins the clickable ads | Marketing

The most popular next-generations of social platforms are finally looking to monetise, going beyond the traditional ways and delving into the world of digital marketing.

In an effort to more tightly integrate their advertisement offerings seamlessly into their user experiences, online social companies are increasingly creating their own unique formats. Take Instagram for example, with their carousel ads. These carousel ads give brands more flexibility in telling their stories, allowing people who view their ads the ability to swipe left to see additional images and link to a website of the brand’s choice.

Carousel ads bring the potential of multi-page print campaigns to mobile devices, along with the added benefit of a call-to-action by taking people to a website to learn more. I think this could prove highly beneficial to a fashion company for instance, they could use the carousel to deconstruct the individual products in a collection, whilst a car company might share the different features of one of their new vehicles and provide a link to learn more about the new model or how to purchase.

A previous post I wrote explored the rise of marketing on Snapchat, and they are now experimented with paid Snaps from companies like Cosmopolitan magazine. And now Pinterest, one of the social platforms now considered to have great potential for brands, has launched Cinematic Pins, a new advertising feature that's integrated into the Pinterest user experience.

Cinematic Pins function like Promoted Pins, and grab attention by animating as the user scrolls down the page. They don't feature an auto-play on the homescreen, but when clicked, they open a larger full-motion version of the video.

Pinterest hopes its Cinematic Pins will act as a new way for advertisers to promote their brands and products on its platform, increasing their advertising offerings and generating a new income channel. Because the new ad format only moves when a user is scrolling past the image, it makes it sort of more interactive than the auto-play and click-to-play ads which are often seen on Facebook and Twitter. Cinematic Pins are part of the companies roll-out of a new advertising strategy that offers better targeting, a revised fee model and an overhauled ad-creating service for their clients.

Whilst the move is focused on increasing their profit from advertisers, Pinterest’s take on this digital offering differs enough from their rival social-media platforms so it can distinguish itself despite having far fewer users (72 million compared to Twitter's 302 million). Further to this, Pinterest will soon allow advertisers to specifically target interest-based boards that their users create, as opposed to targeting options of gender, location and category.

A number of brands already have tested the feature, including Unilever, The Gap, L'Oreal, Nestlé, Walgreens, Target, Visa and Wendy's. "Wendy's views Pinterest as a great opportunity to tell its brand story in a way that differentiates them, specifically around the brand's quality, service and values," group creative director at VML Chris Corley, who helped create the campaign.

Take a look at the video below to explore more about the new Cinematic Pins:

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