Dive Brief:
- Pinterest is joining the ranks of social media networks offering video ads.
- According to Digiday, Pinterest is testing promoted video pins with a select group of users as well as internally at the social curation platform. The videos autoplay when users stop scrolling over them, and the test includes video ad length.
- Video in general has become a major part of the user experience on social media, becoming particularly popular on mobile devices.
Dive Insight:
"They (Pinterest) would be wise to launch video ads, as video consumption trends continue to rise. That said, video behavior is not an organic one on Pinterest, so I’d be interested to see how they end up performing," Orli LeWinter, VP of strategy and social marketing at 360i, told Digiday.
Video has proven wildly successful and a lucrative ad format for social media platforms. Facebook, for example, has gone so far as to essentially drop demand-side buying of banner ads in its Atlas platform in favor of native and video ads, which the social media giant feels offer users more value to both users and marketers.
However, one challenge Pinterest faces is that it is not well known as a destination for video viewing like rival Instagram has become. That being said, the photo-posting site has had trouble in the past with tapping into revenue streams, and video ads will complement the Cinematic Pins feature it launched last year.
