Pinterest, the web and mobile photo sharing website, has announced that it is to start selling video advertising in a bid to encourage marketers to showcase the beauty products, clothing ranges and various homeware collections that are so popular on the platform.
Pinterest, which describes itself as a ‘catalogue of ideas rather than a social network’, has been active for just over six years, but this will be the company’s first foray into the world of allowing companies to pay for video content that has the potential to be seen by more than 50 million global users.
Advertisers will be given the ability to buy promoted video pins, and then show buyable pins underneath the original video. This will allow consumers to watch the video, and then subsequently purchase what has been advertised.
Michael Pachter, an analyst working for Wedbush Securities, has previously suggested that the platform would be able to generate as much as $500m annually from the advertisements placed on the site.
Pinterest was valued at $11bn in March 2015 after it raised $367m in new capital, though industry experts believe that the organisation is now worth far more.
Video has become an increasingly popular medium on the website recently; the number of video pins has grown by a colossal 60% in the past 12 months, while YouTube is now far and away the most popular site pinned to users’ boards across the website.
Pinterest also recently launched its own native video player, with lead product manager Steve Davis saying other video improvements, such as personalised recommendations, will ‘start hitting the website over the next few months’.
Pinterest’s decision to invest heavily in video is hardly surprising, given that Cisco research estimates that by 2017 video will account for a staggering 69% of all consumer internet traffic, while it was also discovered that 64% of marketers are confident video will ‘dominate’ their strategies in the near future.
YouTube, the world’s second most popular website in terms of traffic, receives more than one billion unique visitors every month, while one in three Britons claim they watch at least one online video each week.
