Pinterest rolls out new commerce features for retailers as search volume climbs

What’s new

Verified Merchant Program. Pinterest will now allow retailers on the platform to be verified, making their products eligible for distribution across Pinterest shopping experiences, including ‘Shop the Look’ Pins and related product carousels. Verified Merchants will have a blue checkmark badge on their profiles, and will be eligible for “high-intent shopping experiences and metrics like conversion reporting,” Pinterest said. The program has been in beta testing since last month and is now rolling out broadly. Retailers interested in signing up for the program can do so at pinterest.com/verified.

Conversion insights. Retailers on Pinterest will have early access to organic and paid conversion insights to more accurately measure Pinterest’s impact on website visits, checkouts, and sales across multiple attribution windows.

Catalogs updates. Pinterest Catalogs, which allow brands to upload a product catalog for ads and Shoppable Pins, have been optimized to “lessen the time from feed ingestion to Product Pin creation,” Pinterest said. The Catalog update also includes new metrics, near real-time feed ingestion, user experience enhancements, and the ability to schedule feed uploads.

Dynamic retargeting. Pinterest has extended its dynamic ad retargeting to global markets for advertisers who want to reach users who have previously engaged with their brand online or have abandoned their shopping carts. It’s a feature that has been in testing in the U.S. for a few months now. Now, brands can globally retarget exact or similar products that users search and save on Pinterest. The company said it will be working to build out even more “optimization levers” to give retailers more control around dynamic targeting.

Why we care

Now more than ever, e-commerce shopping is becoming an increasing necessity as brick-and-mortar retailers shutter their doors for the foreseeable future due to COVID-19. Retailers should be thinking about long-term engagement during this time of heightened online activity. Features that make the experience more frictionless and personalized – like dynamic retargeting or verified merchant badges – add a layer of trust and ease for consumers.

To get take advantage of the new features, Pinterest recommends the following approaches for merchants:

1. Become eligible for increased distribution and access to new measurement and analytics tools through the platform’s Verified Merchant Program.
2. Upload all your products to Catalogs to generate Product Pins, which display price, availability and product descriptions while linking directly to your e-commerce page.
3. Use Shopping Ads to promote your products to reach more Pinners and optimize performance once you’ve set up your product groups within Catalogs.
4. Take advantage of dynamic retargeting to reach users who previously visited your site, but didn’t purchase, as they continue to browse home feed.

More on the news

• Initial partners of Pinterest’s Verified Merchant Program included retailers like Quay Australia, Ruggable, Filson, Coychi, and Lotuff Leather.
• Pinterest said that in recent weeks its seen an increase in searches (compared to the prior two weeks) for topics like “home organization” (+43%), “spa day at home” (+19%), “makeup tutorial for beginners” (+180%), and “kid-friendly recipes” (+64%).