Pinterest launches Visual Search Ads the option to bid for high impact placements in the picture-based search, shopping and closer-to-purchase experience. The new ad offering was announced during Pinterest Presents, the social network’s annual advertiser summit, beyond a number of other performance campaign-focused changes.
What Visual Search Ads do
Search advertising has always been based on keywords. Visual Search Ads operates differently, with the power of the keyword match combined with Pinterest’s visual identification of images, products and user intent to integrate ads within Pinterest Search Results and Pin high ups.
The concept is to connect with people as they are searching against alternatives, not just when they have already decided to key in a product name. As per Search Engine Land, Pinterest believes artificial intelligence enabled visual search will tap into a new form of purchase intent than keyword search:
Advertisers also bidding for a high response and are able to send the users directly to their own website through search or pin closeup experience. It offers a way for brands to communicate with shoppers before they decide what to buy.
The format finds itself at the edge of search and discovery, realms that Pinterest has been struggling to bring together for a long time. A user caught surfing Pinterest looking for inspiration and a user actively seeking a product for purchase have been historically two distinct audiences with two distinct targeting options. Visual Search Ads are designed to reach people halfway in between those states of mind, from browsing to shopping to deciding.
How The Format Works
Visual Search Ads run on Pinterest Intelligence, the company’s artificial intelligence platform for interpreting images products preferences and intentions. Pinterest claims this technology transforms those visual and behavioral signals into targeting opportunities for advertisers to bid on.
Pinterest CEO Bill Ready compared the visual search feature to how brands can appear with relevant content when people “see, save and decide”. Ready added this new format is part of the growing trend of AI product discovery instead of having to type in a keyword.
Visual Search Ads is designed to complement lower-funnel goals and would operate and Pinterest Performance+, which is the current AI-driven performance advertising product suite. Because of this, advertisers currently running Performance+ should be able to add the new ad format without having to build their account from the ground up.
The format will be going into beta in the coming weeks across all Pinterest advertisers markets for qualified advertisers, though Pinterest hasn’t announced a specific date on when it will go from beta into general availability.
Pinterest has talked about Pinterest Intelligence as the “arterial” of most of its recent ad innovations not solely Visual Search Ads. The “exact same engine” is also designed to help shape how Performance+ campaigns target users and how products are sorted, indicating Pinterest intends to use visual and behavioral indicators as the core fuel for ad products long-term, not just in the new feature.
The Numbers Behind The Push
Per Pinterest, each month users perform over 80 billion searches on the site. The company claims nearly all searches are visual not text and over 50% are commercial.
Those numbers are straight from Pinterest, so keep in mind that this is Pinterest trying to illustrate how its search works rather than an objective third-party measurement. But, that scale helps explain why Pinterest is so eager to see visual search as a real opportunity for ads and not just a side note.
The argument from the advertisers perspective is simple. If a significant portion of Pinterest searches are visual and driven by purchase intent, then an ad served directly within that visual search experience can present itself to the shopper before they hit a traditional keyword-based ad.
Pinterest has previously used search volume numbers like these to support its advertising offering, but it has never, until now, used the figures to refer to an ad format dedicated to visual search instead of search or Performance+ campaigns more broadly.
Pinterest Performance+ Gets More Advertiser Control
Performance+ will also see the launch of Priority Products and Visual Search Ads. Priority products allows advertisers to select particular products on which to have their system focus for key event launches, promotions, and category pushes while the automatic campaign optimization remains in effect.
This speaks to a sort of common tension seen in automated ad delivery. While one can have the best automated bidding and placement in the world for the whole campaign, it may not be what the brand really wants to be advertising at that moment (say, a new product launch or special promotion). Priority Products is designed to fill in those moments without sacrificing the automation efficiencies for the rest of the campaign.
Another feature Pinterest is launching today is self-serve A/B testing on both creative and targeting (including within Performance+). The tool is supposed to allow advertisers to test two different campaigns against each other and track if a variation is actually better.
New Tools For App Marketers
The new App Promotion objective was recently launched worldwide in beta for qualified advertisers. The objective is designed from the ground up to deliver app installs, providing app marketers with a much more targeted pathway to that goal rather than retrofitting a generic performance campaign to theme app install targets.
Pinterest reports that one advertiser experienced up to an 85% improvement in cost per install using the new objective versus prior methods. Similar to the search volume data, that figure comes directly from Pinterest’s reporting on one advertiser’s results, so it should be assumed to be an example rather than a typical result every app marketer can anticipate.
AI Moves Further Into The Consumer Product
But Pinterest is also deploying more of its AI technology on the consumer side of the platform rather than just on the advertising side. For example, a new tools called Restyle allows users to drop an image of a space and then compare different design options imagined by the AI without having to make a choice.
Restyle is debuting in beta in US/Canada. Not an ad product but a consumer feature, again it supports the same thesis behind Visual Search Ads: that Pinterest wants to be where you are peering back and narrowing down your options, whether in buying a sofa or renovating your house.
Pinterest further announced the second season of Bring My Pinterest to Life, the branded content series matching its users with creators and brands to bring their boards to life, is being produced.
What To Watch Next
But, there are some concrete pieces of information that have yet to be revealed. Pinterest has yet to specify how it will bill Visual Search Ads, what the real-world auction structure will be, and how quickly the format will roll out to become available in all markets, not just beta.
In addition, it is unknown the level of branding ads will be able to keep within the search results and Pins closeups, as well as if Visual Search Ads will grow out of their original focus on toward-branding end objectives.
For now, when it is available to test, advertisers who want to do so will have to hold tight until beta access is available in their market and have Pinterest provide more details on activation and measurement.
FAQs
Q 1: What are Pinterest Visual Search Ads?
New ad formats that will enable advertisers to bid for high-visibility placements in Pinterest Search Results and within Pin closeups, enhancing keyword-based targeting with Pinterest’s visual interpretation of Pins and user intent.
Q 2: How is this different from regular keyword-based search ads?
Visual Search Ads combine Pinterest’s AI-driven visual recognition with the relevance of keywords, to serve ads to people who are visually browsing and comparing, rather than keyword searching.
Q 3: How Soon Will Visual Search Ads Launch?
The format is set to go into beta for supported advertisers across all Pinterest advertising markets in the next weeks. Pinterest did not provide an end date to general availability.
Q 4: Do Visual Search Ads work with Pinterest Performance+?
Yes. Visual Search Ads are eligible for lower-funnel objectives and can be used with Pinterest Performance+, the company’s AI-powered performance advertising platform.
Q 5: What are Priority Products?
Priority Products is a new feature of Performance+ that allows advertisers to instruct the system for the most critical products to watch for at times like product releases or seasonal promotions, while automation handles the other jobs.
Q 6: What does Pinterest’s new self-serve A/B testing feature do?
Brings the ability for advertisers to side-by-side test multiple creatives and targeting options, even inside Performance+, to determine if a change produces positive lift to the campaign.
Q 7: What is the new App Promotion objective?
This is a campaign objective designed solely to promote app installs, providing app marketers a more focused approach to reaching mobile growth aims than optimizing a general performance campaign.
Q 8: Are Pinterest’s performance numbers independently verified?
No. Those numbers, like 80 billion monthly searches and 85 per cent reduction in cpi, come straight from Pinterest’s own disclosures and should be considered as Pinterest’s samples.
Q 9: What is Restyle?
Restyle an AI utility for consumers that allows users upload a picture of a space and then use AI to create reimagined designs to compare. Restyle is entering its beta in the United States and Canada.
Q 10: Who signs off on Visual Search Ads?
Pinterest CEO Bill Ready revealed the format at Pinterest Presents, an annual advertiser summit, and joined announced other new advertising and product innovations.
