eCommerce zoomed to the forefront in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. What was once only regularly used by the most early-adopters for a handful of products, online shopping has become a mainstay in 2021, even as vaccines roll out and lockdowns are lifted. And digital marketing platforms show no signs of reversing the good fortunes of their platforms, brands, and marketers as eComm continues to perform.
Pinterest Launches Dynamic Ads and Ad Creation
As a marketer, if you haven’t looked at Pinterest as an opportunity yet, you may want to reconsider. Unlike many social media sites with feeds that scroll your friends and favorite brands’ recent content, Pinterest is more like a topic search engine. Posts (pins) don’t disappear just because it was posted three weeks ago. If someone is searching for something you’ve posted about, your content can be found with the right optimizations and paid placements.
Now Pinterest has launched a new dynamic creative ad process. Dynamic creative allows marketers to create anywhere from a few to a few hundred variations of ads that are served based on relevancy and performance. For example, five different images, five different sets of copy, and five different pricing variations result in hundreds of combinations served to your audience. That is a huge time-saver because it does not require creating all those different ad combinations in advance. And serving those ads in real-time based on user queries and interests gives us the opportunity to test and learn quickly and efficiently learn which messages, products, price points, and promotions are resonating with audiences thus resulting in a better return on ad spend (ROAS) for our clients.
Of note, and what could potentially hinder this major marketing step forward is the impending Apple privacy changes that could affect a percentage of Pinterest’s nearly 450 million users.
Regardless, as a digital marketer, this is going to be an opportunity for brands to market their products that should not be ignored. If you haven’t considered Pinterest recently, now may be the time to have another look.
Google Adds Price-Drop Notification to Search Results
While eComm has continued its trajectory in 2021, what’s also continued is the demand for specials, deals, and savings. Knowing the interest level in low prices, Google has quietly added price-drop information to search results. These results are already being shown on U.S. searches in English.
Having the price-drop shown does require a specific price on a product; price ranges can not be used. Simply add an Offer to your Product structured data. Google takes it from there, automatically calculating the changes based on the product pricing sent to them over time via the schema.
We think this addition to search results is likely to have a tremendous impact on online purchasing and brand competition. With everyone shopping online and looking for a good deal, this is an opportunity for brands and their products to be specifically denoted in Google results, potentially giving rise to increased purchases and new customer acquisition they may not have otherwise garnered.
Pinterest Tests Stories Panel Above the Feed
It’s not often that Pinterest makes news, let alone twice in a week. We thought this was of interest to marketers and brands as Pinterest continues to evolve into an eCommerce social media outlet.
If you weren’t already aware, there are Stories on Pinterest. Why? Because the format works as an engagement driver and keeps users looking at the platform. That’s the reason behind Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even LinkedIn recently adding the Stories format to their apps. But unlike most of those platforms, the Pinterest Stories don’t disappear after 24 hours, and they’re not standalone pieces of content; they exist within a Pin.
As part of Stories’ continuing rollout, Pinterest has been testing the tab at the top of the feed to display them. Not everyone has Stories or the Stories Tab yet, as they have been rolling out as a gradually expanding test with content creators since last fall. There’s no word on when or if Stories will become available to everyone.
We bet that it will become widely available. It’s just too important a feature to include as video becomes the most critical item on the web and social media. This feature would open the door for both organic and ad content by brands and marketers, and we cannot envision Pinterest missing out on that opportunity and revenue.
Pinterest’s looking to put more focus on its Story Pins https://t.co/uHOHuuZWiL
— Social Media Today (@socialmedia2day) January 25, 2021
