Pinterest will soon start allowing brands to upload customer email lists and target ads to their customers amongst the 100 million-plus global users of the social network.
Customer match targeting started with Facebook and was adopted by Google, and now Pinterest is cashing in. Pinterest will match the emails in advertisers’ databases against the email addresses attached to its users’ accounts. The company will use an encryption process called “hashing” to match the two databases without exposing personally identifiable information.
With Google you need 1,000 or more matching email addresses for search targeting, and 100 matches for YouTube/Gmail advertising. Similarly, Pinterest needs just 100 matches for lists to be used.
Advertisers can also use the lists for exclusion — for instance, to exclude existing clients from viewing lead generation ads for potential new customers.
Ads product lead at Pinterest Nipoon Malhotra said Pinterest plans to roll out a self-serve tool to all SMB’s later in the year (and to all English-speaking markets by the end of the year).
Pinterest is also investing heavily in increasing the ability to target key words and interests. Recently, the number of interests that can be targeted has increased from 30 to over 420.
Why should you care?
While Pinterest is a relatively small player in the New Zealand market, the ability to promote visual images to people specifically searching and browsing in categories your business is in looks promising. And customer match targeting can allow very specific segmentation, increasing the effectiveness of ad campaigns.
The relatively low cost and long shelf-life of Pinterest ads adds will also appeal to many merchandisers, as will the potential returns for comparatively minimal effort.
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Glenn is a Partner and Senior Consultant who has had a very successful career building growth companies in the private equity arena. He has a wealth of experience in both the digital space and strategy development. Prior to becoming a partner in SureFire Glenn built one of the largest digital teams in New Zealand for a NASDAQ listed global online marketing company & Google's largest premium partner.
