Pinterest helps retailers launch, measure campaigns
Pinterest is moving forward with its verified merchant program and making it easier for retailers to promote products.
The visually-oriented social media platform is officially rolling out its Verified Merchant program with retailers including Quay Australia, Ruggable, Filson, Coyuchi, and Lotuff Leather. Initially announced in February 2020, the program is designed to help users “discover and buy from trustworthy brands.” Retailers that are accepted into the program have their products eligible for distribution within dedicated Pinterest shopping features such as Shop the Look pins or related product carousels.
Verified merchants receive a special blue checkmark, and their product pins also show product availability and pricing info. Other benefits include a special shop tab on their profile that makes it easier for users to see what they sell. Pinterest approves retailers for the program via manual review.
In addition, Pinterest is offering retailers early access to organic and paid conversion insights so they can measure Pinterest’s impact on their site visits, checkouts and sales over multiple attribution windows.
The company has also updated its catalog feature to lessen the time from feed ingestion to product pin creation, and is adding new metrics, near-real-time feed ingestion, user experience enhancements, and feed ingestion scheduling. Advertisers in global markets can now reach users who have previously engaged with their brand online or who have unpurchased items in their cart by retargeting exact or similar products they search and save on Pinterest. Pinterest is adding more optimization levers to give advertisers more control.
Pinterest is rolling out these promotional enhancements as consumer response to the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting customer search preferences. In the past two weeks, the company says it has seen increases in searches (compared to the prior two weeks) for topics like “home organization” (+43%), “spa day at home” (+19%), “makeup tutorial for beginners” (+180%), and “kid-friendly recipes” (+64%).