Pinterest makes Shopping Ads self-serve, launches new Catalogs feature

Pinterest Catalogs dashboard for retailers.

Pinterest announced a new way to showcase products with the launch of Catalogs Monday. The feature that allows brands to upload multiple product images, organize the products by category and turn the images into dynamic Product Pins. The company is also finally making Shopping Ads available via Ads Manager so advertisers can launch Shopping campaigns via the self-serve interface.

Why you should care

These are significant steps for retail marketers to easily scale their presence on Pinterest. Shopping Ads rolled out of beta last March, but advertisers have had to apply to participate. Making them available to via Ads Manager brings Pinterest’s functionality in line with Google, Bing and Facebook’s product ad campaigns.

The new Catalogs feature makes it possible for merchants to create a full product catalog on the site as long as they have claimed a domain on Pinterest. Catalogs can then be used to generate product Pins in bulk and organize the Pins by product groups.

From there, advertisers can easily promote product groups using Pinterest’s Shopping Ads through Ads Manager. The Catalog feature comes with a dashboard that makes it easy to upload images and organize feeds by product groups.

With the launch of Catalogs, Pinterest is starting to roll-out new dedicated sections for products from specific retailers, making it possible for users to go deeper into a brand’s catalog by clicking “more from [insert brand name].”

Users will also see a “more ideas” button that leads to in-stock ideas related to products they have saved.

More on the news

• 84 percent of Pinterest’s weekly users use the app before deciding what to buy next, according to a November, 2018 “Path to Purchase” study from Gfk.
• The same Gfk study found that 83 percent of the same users have made a purchase based on content they found from brands on Pinterest.
• Both Rothy’s and Room & Board report Pinterest’s Promoted Pins have significantly helped their marketing efforts, with Rothy’s seeing referral traffic from Pinterest grow more than 35 percent month-over-month. Room & Board said it experienced a 51X return on ad spend with Promoted Pins, and 33X return on ad spend from Shopping Ads.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media's General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.