Yahoo News 
Pinterest edges into influencer marketing
BII
This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Digital Media Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.
This week, Pinterest launched “Pin Collective,” a new feature that connects brands with Pinterest’s top content creators.
Businesses can now tap a hand-selected group of publishers, production shops and independent creators to help craft compelling content well-suited for the platform. Here are some important implications of the launch:
By making popular content creators more accessible, Pinterest is paving the way for influencer marketing. Influencer marketing, the act of enlisting popular users with large social media followings in a marketing campaign — has exploded over the last year. Sixty one percent of US marketers planned on increasing their influencer marketing budgets in 2015, according to an Augure study. Pin Collective is an important step in creating an influencer marketplace as competitors like Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube already connect brands with influencers.
The platform is getting simpler. Last year, Pinterest launched the “Pin Factory,” an in-house production studio that helps brand create ads, and was used by at least 600 brands. Pin Collective represents another tool Pinterest offers to make it even easier for brands to create high-quality advertisements.
The tool is open for all marketers, regardless of size. Since there are no minimum ad budget requirements, Pinterest is encouraging less savvy marketers to experiment with the platform, luring incremental ad dollars. This is also a priority for competitors like Facebook, who want to simplify the ad-buying tools for SMB’s, according to the WSJ.
To receive stories like this one directly to your inbox every morning, sign up for the Digital Media Briefing newsletter. Click here to learn more about how you can gain risk-free access today.
See Also:
