Pinterest Moves To Selling Ads By Auction

Apparently taking a page from Google’s book – going forward Pinterest will allow retailers and brands to bid on its ad inventory in auctions.  The auctions are designed to allow bidders access to cost-per-thousand impressions ad inventory – previously Pinterest (like most other players in social media) was selling CPM ads at a fixed price.

The move goes hand in hand with Pinterest’s decision to allow retailers and marketers to cap the maximum number of times individual consumers will see ad campaign collateral.

“By using this new solution, you’ll get more impressions for your campaigns at more efficient rates and drive higher results,” writes Jenny Chiu, the social networks’ partnerships lead in a blog post.

This is one of several recent strategies the click rich – but monetization hungry – social media firm has undertaken to try to buttress its growing advertising business.  Pinterest is also planning to push more targeted marketing options, ad formats and management tools throughout the remainder of 2016 and 2017 as it moves to grab a bigger share of retail advertising budgets.

Pinterest has long been seen as natural fit for commerce – since it encourages users to visually render their desires and post them in an appeal fashion for all the world to see. Pinterest has also moved of late to improve its visual search capability to make it easier for customers to quickly and easily purchase what they see on the site.

So far auction style ad bidding is only up for grabs in the U.S., U.K. and Canada.