Less than a year after launching video ads, Pinterest is expanding the feature with autoplay, search integration, and new metrics. On Wednesday, Pinterest announced the three new business features for advertisers.
Video ads have been around since August but now those clips will automatically play as users scroll through their feeds. The autoplay feature means the video starts playing as soon as it pops up on screen, with no tap necessary to start the footage. The move, Pinterest says, is designed to bring businesses more views — and with a per-impression payment structure, the platform says the change could bring the cost per view down for many businesses.
Those promoted videos are also branching outside of the news feed. Paid videos will now appear in related search results, as well as popping up when users tap on the circle in the corner or the “More Like This” feature that uses object recognition technology to find similar pins. Like in the home feed, video ads will autoplay in both the search and More Like This results.
Mobile users do however have an option to prevent autoplay from eating up data — you can turn the autoplay off when out of range of a Wi-Fi network by accessing the settings and switching off “Autoplay on mobile data.”
The autoplay and expanded locations for video ad are being paired with new data for businesses to track just how well that video ad performed. Analytics will now show how long users watched and whether the video was fully on screen or partially scrolled past. The Ads Manager also now uses Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings, which means businesses can see the age and gender of users that watched the video.
Pinterest is continuing to enhance their options for advertisers, attracting businesses with the suggestion that users are already there to search for food, fashion, decor and other ideas. “Unlike on other platforms, where ads interrupt people as they’re trying to enjoy posts from friends, on Pinterest people are actually looking for videos that inspire them to give ideas a try,” Wednesday’s blog post says.
Last week, Pinterest added advertising into Shop The Look, Instant Ideas, and Lens, artificially intelligent tools powered by object recognition in images. In January, the platform added the ability to advertise with still images inside search results.
