Brief:
- Toyota's campaign for the 2019 Avalon luxury sedan saw a 53% view-through rate for video ads on Pinterest's mobile and web platform, resulting in millions of impressions — the car maker's best-performing Pinterest campaign to date. The viewership metric was higher than benchmark results for video and static campaigns, per a case study Pinterest shared with Mobile Marketer.
- Targeting Gen X and millennial consumers, Toyota's campaign aimed to position the Avalon as an upscale vehicle associated with a premium lifestyle. Its short videos combined audio sounds with interior and exterior shots of the car to help viewers imagine the driving experience while showcasing features like the ability to open doors from an Apple Watch.
- The initiative included Promoted Videos and Pins, ad formats that can target audiences based on their activities on Pinterest or an advertiser's site. Toyota worked with agencies Saatchi & Saatchi and Burrell Communications on the visual campaign.
Insight:
Toyota's positive results on Pinterest demonstrate how brands can reach target audiences and deepen purchase intent through visual mobile and web platforms. Pinterest's key strength as a marketing channel comes from the aspirational activities of its users. People often use Pinterest to collect images based on their interests and plans, which may include spending on fashion, travel, interior decorating and in the case of Toyota, a new car. The Avalon ads' view-through rate and millions of impressions indicate that Toyota's target audiences are receptive to multisensory ads on mobile and desktop.
In touting Toyota's results, Pinterest cited demographic data about its user base. The platform, which has worked to distance itself from being associated with social networks, reaches 54% of U.S. millennials and 48% of people ages 45-54. Among its 265 million users, 6.3 million actively engage with vehicle content on the platform, suggesting that Pinterest may be a marketing destination for other car campaigns. In addition, 62% of auto Pinners — as the company calls its users — made a purchase based on seeing auto content from brands on the platform, according to data from the case study.
While Pinterest got its start mostly with static images, it's made a bigger push into video in recent years to engage users with more lively and "thumb-stopping" content. Last month, Pinterest introduced four video-related updates for creators and brands, including a revamped video uploading tool to make video posts easier to share. L'Oréal, Giada De Laurentiis' Giadzy, Tastemade and PureWow are among the brands that have used video spots on Pinterest to spark inspiration and tell a story through paid content, per a company blog post.
