No Buy Button In Pinterest’s Future

“We don’t have any plans to announce a buy button at this time.”

Thus spoke Eva Smith, Pinterest’s head of marketing and communications insights, commenting on the social media site’s user study, according to The Wall Street Journal.

That study found overall that users don’t just tap into Pinterest to build a more attractive future – it is also a driving force in how those signed on to the platform are making purchasing choices.

Of 1,500 active Pinteresters surveyed, 52 percent agreed that they use the site to help find items they want to buy – a percentage that jumps to a little over 60 percent among those who identified as “millennial moms.” The survey also found that a little under half of all respondents said Pinterest recommends relevant products to buy.

“The focus of the study was to gain a much deeper understanding of what it is our pinners are doing and how they’re using the platform,” Smith noted, according to WSJ.

As for where those purchases happened – about 30 percent of survey takers said they bought something online, 32 percent went on to buy in-store, while only 25 percent reported doing nothing after viewing Pinterest content.

According to ComScore estimates, Pinterest received about 72.8 million unique U.S. visitors in March, a 25 percent jump from a year ago. Those users are mostly female at this point and are using the site to plan weddings and decorates their homes. While Pinterest is working hard to bring boys onto the platform, the latest survey indicates they have some work to do.

As for the power using class – millennial moms led the way in all but one category when users were asked whether Pinterest helped them decide what to buy. The outlier category? Health and fitness, where dads reportedly scored highest.

The new data release supports the general push from Pinterest toward monetization via its advertising business; these days marketers can buy “promoted pins” that resemble user-generated submissions but are designed to target certain demographics.

Pinterest is one of the most prized startups in the world – with a valuation of around $11 billion – which is an attractive lure for investors, if the company can find a way to leverage millions of users into millions of purchases for advertisers.