Gravity Blankets cuts CPAs 58% with new Pinterest conversion optimization tools

Brief:

Pinterest, the image-collecting platform that's going public next week, has added new conversion optimization tools to help advertisers reach their marketing goals on its app and website, according to company news shared with Mobile Marketer. The optimization tool is available for four existing Pinterest ad formats: promoted pins, promoted videos, carousel ads and shopping ads.
Conversion optimization lets advertisers set specific goals for Pinterest campaigns, such as driving an online checkout, lead generation or signups to services. Pinterest has also expanded its promoted video format to provide marketers with a way to reach traffic or conversion goals.
Gravity Blankets, a weighted blanket company, said sales doubled while its costs per acquisition fell 58% in testing the new Pinterest conversion optimization features. The liquor membership company Flaviar boosted its online traffic by 400% and gathered eight times as many leads from its pilot of the software tools.

Insight:

Pinterest's addition of more products centered on conversion optimization is part of a broader trend among social media companies to better tailor their ad formats to trigger a specific action, like a purchase or subscription sign-up. The move could help Pinterest court more marketers to its platform as it preps for its expected IPO next week.

The conversion optimization offerings could specifically bring in more to direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands that have relied heavily on social media to raise awareness but are now also turning to the platforms to drive sales. Rival apps to Pinterest, such as Instagram, have recently ramped up their efforts to add more shoppable features versus sending users to a brand's website. Companies like Gravity Blankets being able to grow their sales while paying less to reach individual customers on Pinterest might make the conversion optimization feature a competitive advantage the platform can wield.

In the past year, Pinterest has worked to refine its service and broaden its appeal to marketers, as consistently growing advertising revenue will be essential once the company is publicly traded. Pinterest in August offered to all brands a bigger "max.width" ad format that's about four times larger than its standard video ads and stretches the full width of a smartphone screen. In October, Pinterest debuted Product Pins to show up-to-date pricing and inventory information, and to provide direct links to a checkout page on a retailer's site. The company in February then automated curation of its Shop the Look feature to reduce dependence on human employees to match images with the appropriate product links.

The conversion optimization expansion blankets several key Pinterest ad formats, like promoted pins, promoted videos, carousel ads and shopping ads, to ensure they're actually producing the desired results for an advertiser. Transparency and accountability are supposed to be the hallmarks of social media advertising, but pre-fixed ad budgets, audience overlap, stale creative and ad fraud can limit the effect of marketing campaigns. DTC ads are one way to measure campaigns more quickly and adjust targeting on the fly.