Interpretation of Pinterest: or the future of Super FB and Twitter advertising giants

October 20 News, Pinterest before the beginning of the trial to sell ads, has been popular with marketers. The Forbes website recently wrote an in-depth analysis of the company in terms of service attributes, advertising forms, and the advantages of rivals, saying the social media service is expected to become an advertising giant, one that is even more than Facebook and Twitter.

The following are the main contents of the article:

A few weeks ago, Pinterest, a social media service especially favored by women and amateurs, began experimenting with ads for 70 million of its users. With many marketers trying to get involved, Pinterest the trial to more than 10 brand sponsors, earning more than 1 million dollars per transaction.

It can be said that Pinterest recently quite hot. On this visual social network, people can create and share collections of content on a mobile phone or computer, such as recipes, hairstyles, baby homes, and so on. Pinterest, which has been under 5 years of age, has been more popular than Twitter (which accounts for more than $30 billion trillion) in women's groups (more than 80% of its users). Pinterest's US users are expected to surpass 40 million this year, to levels comparable to Twitter and Instagram. In overseas markets, it is also fast catching up with Twitter and Instagram, and has opened offices in London, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo over the past year. According to Semiocast, a market research firm, international users currently account for nearly half of Pinterest's newly registered users. In the past year, its active male users have even doubled.

So far, Pinterest users have created more than 750 million nail boards, with a total of more than 30 billion nails, adding 54 million new sheets a day. During the holiday shopping season of 2013, Pinterest accounted for nearly one-fourth of all social-sharing activities. Of all the social networks, only Facebook, with 1.3 billion users, has more than Pinterest in the diversion of Internet distributors.

will be super Facebook and Twitter?

This activity sounds astonishing, but it's not enough to explain the huge business opportunities that Pinterest face. Although it is still in the early stages of commercialization, it is only a matter of time before many analysts and observers see Pinterest over Facebook, Twitter and other mainstream social networks in terms of average per-user income. "Pinterest annual revenue will reach billions of dollars. "Dave Weinberg, founder of social marketing company Loop88 Dave Wimberg.

For marketers, Pinterest has a unique value, a new medium that has never been seen before. One difference between it and other popular social networks is the tenses of content. As Pinterest CEO Ben Silberman (Ben Silbermann) explains, Facebook "is about your contacts, your past and your memories." Facebook users voluntarily provide a wide range of personal information, such as birthdays, the name of their alma mater, emotional status, and so on, that the social network can use to push highly accurate advertising. Twitter's user information is less detailed because it has a per-user income of only half of Facebook, about 3.50 dollars. Twitter's value is still largely in the "happening" event, allowing advertisers to use real-time discussions of popular events for branding, such as the World Cup, the presidential election, the hit TV series "Women's Prison" (Orange is the New black), and so on.

If Facebook hits the past, Twitter is now, then Pinterest is the future. "Pinterest is about what you want to do and what you're going to do next." "Silberman said. This future is what brand marketers want. When a user nails a wedding photo or a coffee table picture on her nail board, she sends a signal to the merchant that the latter may want to sell her a wedding dress or coffee table. "There is an intention behind every nail map." Pinterest Joannie Bradford, Joanne Bradford, said, "The nail map is tantamount to saying ' I'm going to organize this into my life ', like cutting it off from a magazine." ”

Marketers are fascinated by the idea of being able to lock in consumers when browsing behavior turns into a delicate moment for shopping. "Strategically, one of the things we want to figure out is how to reach consumers early in the inspiration or planning phase." "We don't have a very good way of identifying the consumers in that process," said David Doctorow, senior vice president of global marketing, one of Pinterest's franchise advertisers, Expedia's David Doctrow. ”

Currently, advertising is the only source of revenue for Pinterest. However, it needs only one small step to become the middleman of hundreds of thousands of of retailers already exhibiting their products on its platform. "Our next step will be how to make it easier for you to go shopping for the goods you want." "Silberman said. That's Amazon's turf, but Facebook and Twitter have been involved in experimenting with "buy" buttons to create a smooth and convenient shopping experience. In contrast, Pinterest has a natural advantage in the field of electrical business. Independent research data show that users of other social platforms are more likely to share product links and complete big deals.

Need to overturn Google

Pinterest to establish his position in the future, it will have to knock down a very powerful market ruler, Google. Google is also involved in using the purchase intent signal to sell relevant information to marketers. That is the basis for its search advertising business, which is the source of about Two-thirds of the company's annual revenue (55 billion dollars).

Silberman has served as a product specialist for two years at Google's advertising department, so he knows exactly which opponents he will face. His keynote address at the Cannes advertising festival called Google "the Ultimate Card Catalogue"-an outdated technology that comes in handy only if you know what you want to find. Evan Sharp, another co-founder of Pinterest, Evan Sharp that Pinterest "allows people to see that they don't know the possibilities".

Pinterest the open search form as a discovery. Tim Kendall, Pinterest product Director, Tim Kendall that figuring out how to do this is "the biggest business opportunity in the Internet field for the past 10-20 years." "His chosen timeframe is no coincidence: as the monetization director of Facebook from 2006 to 2010, he shaped a strategy that eventually put the social network at more than $200 billion trillion. In Kendall's view, Pinterest will be larger than Facebook and Google. "That's why I joined Pinterest. ”

So far, Pinterest has received $764 million in total through 7 rounds of financing, including Firstmark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture This May, it completed a round of $200 million trillion in billions of dollars worth of $5 billion trillion in funding to get "fuel" for international expansion.

The company currently has more than 400 employees, compared with less than 20 in early 2012. It recently signed a lease on the new office building (its current building was only two years old). "I need to spend a lot of time trying to do a good job of internal communication to make sure everyone moves in the same direction," he said. "Technology has made it easier for small teams to expand their products quickly, but no one has been able to invent something that will quickly build a corporate culture in a Silberman way." ”

The cornerstone of Pinterest culture is a principle called knit. Other big tech companies in Silicon Valley are led by a certain talent – Google is an engineer, Apple is a designer – and Pinterest solves problems by combining different skills. "In that case, you can make something that a specialty person can't do on his own." "The company's chief product officer, Kendall, points out. "We are trying to shape a culture that is highly appreciative of various talents." "said Sharp.

Promotion of Nail map projects

In Belviu, Washington, a group of Ambassadors Pinterest held meetings to teach Expedia executives the art of nailing pictures. User Experience researcher Lakin Brown (Larkin Brown) explained to them that the user's different nails--planning projects, contrasting different styles, or just to get inspired--the corresponding product buying phase: cognition, consideration, preference and purchase. "To be understood, it is the nail chart that triggers this pattern." "said Brown. Then, Kevin Knight, Pinterest advertising agency and brand marketing director Kevin Nait, stressed that every nail-board created by a brand should correspond to an interest that people might have, because that's how the user organizes their own nail boards. "Outdoor furniture is not an interest; "he said. In 2013, Expedia spent more than 1.7 billion dollars on branded advertising and marketing, and its brands included Expedia.com, Hotels.com and Trivago.

The 5-hour workshop was held by Pinterest in its promotional nail map (promoted Pins) project to more than 10 partners (that is, its advertisers, each of whom spent 1 million to 2 million dollars for a six-month promotion). After the workshop, the participants ' push-pin interaction rate usually increased by 25%. The Bradford, who is responsible for sales, points out that making sure advertisers are aware of the situation before they start spending can ensure they are satisfied with the advertising effect. Pinterest must also make sure that they are satisfied, because they are said to pay $30 to 40 dollars per thousand impressions paid to Pinterest, several times as Facebook charges.

Compare the advantages of Facebook

Similar to Facebook's sponsorship posts (sponsored Posts) and Twitter's promotional tweets (promoted tweets), Pinterest's promotional spike is a form of native advertising that forms the same as the user-generated content. Native ads are suitable for the mobile screen, where advertisements must be present in the main stream. According to comscore, more than 90% of Pinterest's usage comes from the mobile end, higher than Facebook (68%) and Twitter (86%).

Compared to other social networks, Pinterest has an advantage in the display of native advertisements. Facebook may know you're a fan of the Cleveland Browns, wear XL, but when it shows you an ad for the Browns jersey in your news feed, you still feel harassed, who buys a sweatshirt on Facebook anyway, after all?

The Pinterest user is basically in the state of planning how to consume the shopping. If you're browsing the beach resort ideas, Expedia shows that the beach resorts in Cancun are not intrusive-it brings you more information. "Pinterest is a place where people love to find things. "Brand is the center of the place," says Don Faul, the company's operating director, Dan Fore. "In order to avoid advertising that looks too much like advertising, Pinterest has developed some basic principles: each promotional nail map must initially be a common nail on the partner Nail board, and partners should not engage in price promotions and competitions and other gimmicks."

"Vogue phenomenon"

The right situation means everything, especially for high-end marketers. Yahoo CEO Marissa (Marissa Mayer) described the situation as "Vogue", meaning that magazine ads looked like part of the entire reading experience, while online advertising was always disgusting. Yahoo's 1 billion dollar takeover of another visual social network, Tumblr, is intended to create that phenomenon at pixel level. By contrast, Pinterest, with a larger and more active audience, is more hopeful.

"On the Pinterest, people show at least some kind of intention to get what you're offering them." "As a luxury brand, this is a big step in the right direction," vineyard Vines marketing director Meggen Burns (Meghan Burns). We can buy impressions all day, but the point is to keep people in a positive relationship with the brand. ”

Pinterest provides a set of tools to help brands negotiate the time and capital returns they invest and to work with them to develop new measurement tools that meet their needs. Burns said the company's network traffic and new user numbers have grown since it started paying for the promotion of staples, and its non-paid spike charts are also better represented in terms of audience coverage and interaction. A data analysis of 25,000 retailers shows that the Pinterest users who drain their web sites may end up selling more than 10% more people than other social-networking sites. Still, Burns wants to see evidence that the brand's Pinterest fans can be turned into sales. "I'm looking forward to another data saying, ' Shoppers are ready to shop here. ' she said.

Once this happens, Pinterest can sell the product directly? The electricity merchant is clearly part of the Pinterest road map, although it has ample financial support, but the business has not yet formed. Its staff is still just one-eighth of Twitter, much less than Facebook and Google. Pinterest is still a single-minded affair, though it will give rivals a first-hand advantage.

This did not bring trouble to Silberman and sharp. Their minds are not on selling goods to users.

Their current focus on business is much larger than that of electricity dealers. "How do we find out what Google does in the search field?" Silberman mused, "How can we show you what you are not aware of, but you will like?" We think that if we can answer this question, the other business will naturally come true. ”

(Responsible editor: Lvguang)