Pinterest adds measurement, data vendors to its Marketing Partners program

rvlsoft / Shutterstock.com

On Wednesday, Pinterest added marketing measurement and data companies to its Marketing Partners (née Marketing Developer Partners) program.

A quick refresher on Pinterest’s Marketing Partners program: Pinterest introduced the program in April 2015 as a way to open up its automated tools to post content and buy ads on its platform, but only to certain companies on whom Pinterest would effectively bestow its own “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” Facebook and Twitter operate similar programs.

A year and a half since the program’s launch, more than half of Pinterest’s ad revenue comes from brands buying its ads through these approved Marketing Partners, according to Pinterest’s blog post published on Wednesday. But to bring even more money into the fold, Pinterest needs to give advertisers more control over how that money is being spent and more insight into what they’re getting in return for it. So now it is.

With the addition of measurement companies like Adjust, AppsFlyer, Apsalar, Kochava and Tune to its Marketing Program, Pinterest will let advertisers use these third-party tools to check that their ads were shown to their intended audience and track what impact those ads had, such as how much they have changed people’s perception of a brand or how much they affected product sales. And brands using Moat — but only brands using Moat — will be able to measure whether their ads on Pinterest actually had a chance to be seen.

Pinterest is also adding companies that help advertisers apply their own data when targeting ads. These companies — like Epsilon, Experian, Salesforce’s Krux, Acxiom’s LiveRamp, mParticle and Neustar — will be able to take a brand’s data, like a list of customers’ email addresses, and use it to aim ads at those customers on Pinterest, as well as people who may not be customers but share similar characteristics.

About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson, Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat’s ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar’s attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon’s ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube’s programming strategy, Facebook’s ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking’s rise; and documented digital video’s biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed’s branded video production process and Snapchat Discover’s ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands’ early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo’s and Google’s search designs and examine the NFL’s YouTube and Facebook video strategies.