Promoted Pins Going Global

The battle to better monetize its service rolls on for Pinterest — the social media site most naturally fitted to commerce with its vast catalogs on “pinned” items.

That struggle is going global, as Pinterest has announced that it plans to take Promoted Pins on the international road, starting with a U.K. rollout.

Promoted Pins do exactly what they say: allow businesses to have their Pins placed right in front of users in their feeds.

The worldwide rollout starts in the U.K. and will continue through the English-speaking world through the second half of 2016, according to the social media firm.

Pinterest, with 100 million users and about $1 billion in venture funding under its belt, faces the essential hurdle of the social media platform: Now that it’s built that big user base (phase 1), it now has the difficult trick ahead of it of figuring out how to turn that group into a source of money (phase 2).

Pinterest’s moves in that direction include both Promoted Pins and Buyable Pins, which allow Pinterest users to finish a transaction without ever leaving the wonderful world of Pinterest. As of yet, Buyable Pins are not promotable, which some view as something of an oversight.