Pinterest Debuts Promoted Carousel Ad Formats

Promoted Carousel ads can be served in Pinterest’s home feed, Related Pin or search fields of the photo-sharing network with audiences then prompted to tap on said cards or through to the advertiser’s website.

Advertisers can buy Carousel Ads via an I/O or directly using Pinterest’s native ads manager suite, or by using programmatic media trading via its API marketing partners who offer bidding optimization using algorithms. Advertisers can also work with a Pinterest rep directly.

Pinterest claims the multi-image ad format can help marketers give consumers a better understanding of their business or product/service offering. Cheerios, CoverGirl and Everlane have been using the service in beta.

Pinterest is positioning the new ad formats as suitable to helping marketers achieve both their branding and direct response-orientated KPIs in much the same way that YouTube is constructing its messaging around the utilities of its ad formats.

Per Pinterest, early campaigns using the ad format saw Cheerios achieve an 11.4 point lift in ad awareness plus an 8.6 point lift in message association. Meanwhile, Everlane’s early work with Promoted Carousel ad formats helped drive three times the regular click-through rate achieved with presently available Pinterest ads.

Sources approached by Adweek commented that the rollout of Promoted Carousel would prove significant, given the introduction of “shoppable” ads in the paid-for social media space. Liz Cole, vp, group director of social strategy, Publicis, said Pinterest users are “already close to the point of purchase than many other social networks.” She added, “People are using Pinterest to plan—what to do, what to make, and what to buy—so I can see shoppable units like carousels being especially effective there.”

Kerry Perse, managing director of social at OMD, said that Pinterest’s Promoted Carousel ads appear to be similar to carousels on Instagram and Facebook, but, “New Pinterest ad formats like Max Width Video and Carousel Ads make them more competitive in comparison to other social platforms. The Max Width video offers marketers the opportunity to tell a more meaningful story by filling the full real estate of the user’s phone.”

She went on to add, “Some of the content categories that users really love to search for on Pinterest also lend themselves better to this type of format—travel, fashion, beauty and food are all highly visual.”