Pinterest Lures Influencers With Shoppable Pins

Online sharing site Pinterest is moving to make inroads into the social commerce movement and extending tools to help creators monetize their pins.

“Pinterest is the place where creators with inspiring and actionable ideas get discovered,” Aya Kanai, Pinterest head of content and creator partnerships, said in a statement. “With this latest update, we’re empowering creators to reach millions of shoppers on the platform and monetize their work. Creators deserve to be rewarded for the inspiration they deliver to their followers, and the sales they drive for brands.”

To enable influencers to leverage the platform to make a living, Pinterest has added a cross-section of pins on its social site to give users the ability to tap on those pins to make purchases. Creators can also make use of affiliate links to bank a percentage of sales volume. Pinterest’s data supports the effectiveness of pins: Some 89 percent of buyers are more likely to move forward with a purchase that’s tagged with Idea Pins compared to those seen in Product Pins. 

Pinterest is also adding a “paid partnerships” label for creators who share branded content. Influencers who create content on behalf of a company can tag the brand in Idea Pins. Once the brand gives the tag the green light, the label will appear. The goal is to improve transparency and make it easier for creators to disclose paid partnerships.

Product tagging on Idea Pins will initially roll out to business accounts in the U.S. and the U.K., and will later expand to international users.