Coming Soon: More Ads On Instagram, And A 'Buy' Feature On Pinterest

Pinterest will soon allow users to buy products they find directly through the app. The company says users have been asking for that feature for a while.

Pinterest

Both social apps have the announcements in posts to their respective blogs. Instagram says its new ad strategy will bring "new formats, increased relevance, and broader [ad] availability." Pinterest is more direct; the title of its post is "Coming soon: Buyable Pins!" Here's a breakdown.

Instagram

Instagram says it's going to experiment with several new methods of "direct response" in ads on the app. In its post, the company says that soon "people will be able to learn about a product or service and then take action directly from an ad to sign up on a website, buy a product, or download an app." Instagram says it will start testing those features in the coming days.

The company also announces that it will begin using demographic data from Facebook to better target Instagram users. (Facebook bought Instagram in 2012.) "Working with Facebook, we will enable advertisers to reach people on Instagram based on demographics and interests, as well as information businesses have about their own customers," Instagram's post says. "We will also improve the feedback mechanisms within Instagram to give people greater control and improve the relevance of the ads they see." Ad Age also reports that Instagram will "add the ability to target its ads based on what accounts people follow on Instagram."

Instagram also plans to open up it its Ads API, as well as Facebook's ad buying interfaces, to select "marketing partners" in the next few months.

Pinterest

Pinterest will introduce "buyable Pins" in the coming weeks. "When you spot a Pin with a blue price, you'll know you can buy it right from the app," the company says. The buyable pins will also have a price filter, options to choose different colors of products, and the availability to purchase items through Apple Pay or a credit card.

In a post to its business blog, Pinterest says it won't take a cut from sales, and businesses will handle their own shipping and customer service "the way you always have." Pinterest says the buyable pins will be available on Apple products first, then Android in future releases.

Differing Responses

So far, Pinterest's announcement has been getting a more positive response than Instagram's. Pinterest says its users have actually been begging for a "buy" button for some time. Business Insider says the move sets the company up to become "one of the largest e-commerce platforms." It points out a survey of Pinterest users that found almost a third bought something in a store after seeing it on Pinterest.

Instagram is a different story. Ad Age says the app is about to get "More Facebook-y," which might not be a compliment. And eMarketer's Debra Aho Williamson told the New York Times, "It's not necessarily going to be the beautiful imagery that fans are used to."
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/06/02/411569265/coming-soon-more-ads-on-instagram-and-a-buy-feature-on-pinterest

Are You Ready for Pinterest's Buy It Now Button

We All heard the news that No more Affiliate links will be allowed on Pinterest BUT dint expect it to turn into A Buy IT Now PIN…..

Move over, Pinning. Here comes buying.

Pinterest, the digital scrapbooking service, is laying the groundwork for an e-commerce offering with a “Buy” button that could launch in as little as three to six months, according to multiple sources. One of the people cautioned Pinterest may wait longer to roll it out, while another said the shopping feature would likely start as a limited test.

The Buy button would allow Pinterest users to order and pay for some of the products they discover on Pinterest without leaving the company’s website or app, these people said. Currently, Pinterest’s 70 million monthly visitors use the service to save and share images of things like recipes, furniture, food and clothing. But since Pinterest burst onto the scene several years ago, industry observers, analysts and users have been waiting for the day that it would transform itself from a digital corkboard into a digital mall.

The company has focused its near-term strategy on advertising, introducing Promoted Pins in May with a handful of big brands, and also recently introduced an “Install” buttonthat lets users download iPhone and iPad apps from within Pinterest. But a big part of what has excited some marketers about Pinterest is its potential to become a spectacular e-commerce platform. For example, it’s logical to assume people are signaling some interest — if not clear purchase intent — in a product when they Pin an image. By adding a Buy button, Pinterest is aiming to shrink the time between wanting something and buying it.

A spokeswoman for Pinterest* declined to comment on the company’s e-commerce strategy. Instead, the company responded: “Part of our strategy to help people discover new things, save them, and do these things in real life has always been to make Pins more useful.”

To handle the payments processing, Pinterest is close to an agreement with Stripe, a young payments company that has similar arrangements with Facebook and Twitter, according to industry sources. A Stripe spokeswoman declined to comment.

It’s not clear whether Pinterest’s advertising and commerce products will be integrated. But one could imagine a scenario in which retailers that incorporate Pinterest’s Buy button could also pay Pinterest to promote those images on the platform, similar to how some brands pay brick-and-mortar retailers to position their products more prominently than competitors’ in stores.

Pinterest’s e-commerce plans come as other social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter begin to experiment with their own Buy buttons. These tests, coupled with the rise of discovery-driven commerce apps such as Fancy, Wish and Wanelo, may have forced Pinterest’s hand in introducing a shopping function sooner than it had originally planned.

We All heard the News that Affiliate Links will be banned from Pinterest but are ready to start buying directly from Pinterest …..

Despite coming late to the game, Pinterest has an advantage over Facebook and Twitter because its users are already coming to the site to find new products. Its user base is also larger than any of the startup apps mentioned above. The challenge will be managing its users’ expectations, as it probably won’t hold any inventory of the products being sold. That means Pinterest won’t control the shipping process, which could make the shopping experience uneven for users. Pinterest will be counting on the sellers to do a good job with order fulfillment, while users may still blame Pinterest if something goes wrong.

The company will also find itself competing against Amazon, which has dabbled with Pinterest-like layouts in the past, as well as eBay, which has unabashedly taken cues from Pinterest’s grid format in its new homepage design and its iPad app. Then there’s Google, which is contemplating adding Buy buttons to some of the ads it shows next to search results, according to a recent report.

As the field has become more crowded, this was a plunge Pinterest had to take. Not only to live up to its hype and valuation — currently $5 billion after raising more than $750 million — but because the opportunity is too big to pass up. Last year, eMarketer estimated that the global e-commerce market would surpass $1.7 trillion in sales in 2015.

* Pinterest executive Joanne Bradford is an independent board member of Re/code’sparent company Revere Digital and has no involvement in our editorial process.

http://recode.net/2015/02/12/pinterest-is-working-on-a-plan-to-introduce-a-buy-button-as-soon-as-this-year/