14 DAY TRIAL // After several years of big growth and four years of existence, Pinterest is finally making a move towards generating some money with the introduction of promoted pins, in the similar vein of promoted tweets.
These ads won't look out of place on the site; rather, the aim is to make them relevant to you, showing stuff you'd be interested in even if it wasn't an ad.
Of course, that's the goal of all advertising (or at least it should be), and maybe it's a bit easier to achieve for native ads like the ones Pinterest is proposing. However, ads will be ads, no matter how you sugar coat it. But it's not like anyone expected Pinterest to stay completely ad-free forever.
"It’s so important that Pinterest is a service that will be here to stay. To help make sure it does, we're going to start experimenting with promoting certain pins from a select group of businesses," Pinterest announced.
"I know some of you may be thinking, 'Oh great…here come the banner ads.' But we're determined to not let that happen," it added.
Pinterest hasn't decided just yet how these new ads will work. It's starting with promoted pins, but may expand to new ad units and new ideas in the future. But the site promises a few things: no matter what the ads will look like, they will be "tasteful," i.e. integrate well with the site, transparent, you'll know it's an ad when you see it, and relevant.
"For our first test, we'll promote a few pins in search results and category feeds. For example, a pin for a Darth Vader outfit from a costume shop might be promoted in a search for 'halloween.' Nobody’s paying for anything yet—we want to see how things go and, more than anything, hear what you think," Pinterest added.