Let’s talk about Pinterest for a minute.
Pinterest was launched in 2010 and quickly filled a unique niche in the social landscape, catering to the need for visual, educational, and inspirational content. Today, with over 100 million active users and new features such as integrated “buy” buttons, Pinterest is the most visual social network of all, with intentful users who browse and buy across all verticals.
Yet, this giant is often overlooked by marketers planning out their social strategy. And that’s a shame, because when used smartly and consistently, Pinterest can bring in amazing SEO benefits and connect with potential customers in valuable and unobtrusive ways.
This week there’s been an exciting development: Pinterest launched promoted video ads, allowing brands to leverage existing creative work to reach consumers in new ways.
Better Late than Never?
YouTube is the first and biggest proponent of video ads. Native Facebook video ads came next. Instagram launched sponsored posts, starting with images but quickly progressing to video ads. Twitter video ads followed soon after. And most recently, LinkedIn also joined the video revolution, with the introduction of 30-second videos from LinkedIn Influencers.
Pinterest only joined the party this week, introducing promoted video ads starting with the U.S. and U.K.
Other recent changes to the platform are all geared towards making video discovery easier, for example, the launch of a native video player.
How Does it Work?
Videos can be any length, but since people are on Pinterest to learn and discover, they are more likely to watch longer pieces of video content than on other networks.
Pinterest doesn’t put a length restriction on videos, and they also don’t have other restrictions such as size and orientation, and topic. The videos autoplay in the feed by using Cinema Loops, which show the key frames of the full video. If you’re interested, you can see the ad with sound enabled. Something that’s really cool is that the site also allows advertisers to show related pins.
Ready to Try Pinterest Promoted Video Ads or Native Video Player?
At Veed.me, we recently revisited our Pinterest presence by taking advantage of the native video player to share collections of video marketing campaigns we love, as a source of inspiration to marketers.
Before you jump in with your a promoted video ad, we suggest that you first focus on building a catalogue of helpful pins. Only when you feel that your Pinterest account provides value, it’s a good time to test out a promoted video ad.
You don’t need to start out with a custom video — there are numerous ways to tailor your existing video content to fit your needs. Check out these articles for more tips:
What are your thoughts on the launch of promoted video ads on Pinterest? Let us know in the comments below.
