Pinterest wants a piece of the search ad market

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Advertisers on Pinterest can now buy ads based on impressions rather than engagement, the company announced.

Brands already had the ability to purchase ads on a cost-per-click and cost-per-engagement basis, but this new offering will help them achieve either more impressions or cheaper ad prices through a bidding auction. The new tool, which is currently available for marketers in the US, Canada, and the UK, brings Twitter more in line with competing ad networks such as Google Display Network and Facebook Ads.

Pinterest has been aggressively building out its ad platform over the last few months to compete against giants such as Facebook and Twitter.

• Search Ads. Last month, the company opened its platform to search ads for the first time. This development enabled Pinterest to earn revenue from the more than two billion monthly searches on the platform. In addition, Pinterest started to allow advertisers to incorporate their own data with Pinterest, to enable them to buy ads more precisely. Pinterest now allows ads to be targeted across demographic, behavioral, and contextual dimensions. The company uses more than 400 signals to identify a user’s interests, to better enable advertisers to place specific ads. 
• Visual search tool. In June, Pinterest rolled out a new tool allowing users to search using photos. This capability encourages users to search more often on the platform, therefore expanding the potential for search ad revenue opportunities.

Pinterest’s recent ad developments suggest the company is looking to earn a slice of the massive search ad market. Search advertising was a $29.2 billion market in 2015 – representing nearly half of the $60 billion generated in digital ads overall, according to Ad Age cited by the IAB. However, the majority of this revenue belongs to Google, which dominates the desktop and mobile search-ad markets.  

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