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Pinterest is the latest social platform to remind us that automation is not going anywhere, particularly when it comes to ads.
“Ad innovation on Pinterest has been at an all-time high,” Pinterest Chief Revenue Officer Bill Watkins said on Oct. 1 at its advertiser summit.
Pinterest announced it is rolling out a new set of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation features dubbed the Pinterest Performance+ suite. This includes both automation and AI features to enable faster creatives, optimize targeting, and manage ad budgets.
“We’re still the place for brands to drive discovery, but we’re now delivering on lower funnel and creative too,” Watkins added. “Brands are increasing Pinterest in their media mix and they no longer need to choose between awareness or lower funnel performance. Now they can have both,” he said. To be sure, lower funnel ads target shoppers that are ready to make a purchase.
On the creative side, Pinterest is now making it easier for advertisers to give product images a quick makeover and transform them into lifestyle imagery. Walgreens, an early tester, Pinterest said, used the creative tool from the Performance+ ad suite for close to 50 products, and the pharmacy chain saw a 55% higher clickthrough rate and 13% lower cost-per-click using Pinterest-AI-generated backgrounds.
Both Amazon and Google have tools to create similar kinds of images.
Pinterest has been working on driving shopping on its platform through ads for the past few years. Ad tools like Direct Links and Performance+ are activating more e-commerce on Pinterest.
Italian luxury fashion brand Prada reported a 30% increase in conversion rate when it tested Performance+ campaigns for the launch of a new leather goods campaign in the US, Pinterest said. Prada also saw improvements in its cost per acquisition, which dropped 64%. It also saw a 1.8x increase in return on ad spend (ROAS) for checkouts, Pinterest claimed.
The company is also adding a layer of personalized promotions to serve shoppers discounts and sales based on what they’ve searched and pinned on their boards. The promotions feature is available by advertiser request in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Mexico, Brazil and Japan, the company said. Pinterest is also making deal ads more prominently visible for users across its home feed, to enable brands to stand out during sale moments.