Today Ben Silbermann, CEO and co-founder of Pinterest, announced to users that Pinterest is launching ads. Promoted Pins, to be precise.
But we love Pinterest so much, and believe in its value to businesses so much, that we don't even mind. As users, Pinterest has proved itself to an incredible tool for surfacing things that are Relevant to Our Interests, and it's actually possible promoted pins will be a benefit. How could ads possibly benefit users, you ask?
Well, we'll quote ourselves. It's about what Pinterest does for users in the first place. Speaking as a charter member of the Pinterest demographic:
So ads related to my interests would probably be useful to me.
How did I find out the Pottery Barn Halloween stuff was up on the PB website, in early August? Pinterest.
But if PB wanted to target people like me- midlife goths of relatively fortunate circumstance who love to shop for tabletop- with promoted pins that let me know Halloween stuff was up, I'd be thrilled. Maybe then I wouldn't have missed out on this amazing, heavily-pinned "Walking Dead" centerpiece, which sold out from the PB site in August, before it ever hit stores.
Monetizing Facebook is a bitch because Facebook was designed around intangible human interactions. Pinterest was designed around attainable objects, archivable content and achievable activities . If we may quote ourselves again:
So we think Promoted Pins will go like a rocket, and we're willing to have the beauty of our Pinboards "tastefully" impinged. If Pinterest was public, and we hadn't spent all our money on handsomely photographed home goods, we'd buy all the stock. Suzanne on Google plus