A Guide to Pinterest Advertising
Pinterest is a social media channel that is often overlooked when it comes to advertising. But who doesn’t have at least one Pinterest board with saved recipes that look delicious? Or of future dream vacation destinations? It’s a highly visual and engaging platform that marketers should consider!In this blog, we’ll give you the lo-down on Pinterest Ads. We’ll cover the following topics: What is Pinterest Pinterest User Demographics How Does Pinterest Advertising Work Types of Pinterest Advertising Static vs. Video Ads on Pinterest Pinterest Advertising Best Practices Pinterest Advertising Costs What is Pinterest? Pinterest describes itself as a “visual discovery engine” for users to find ideas and inspiration. Posts (images, videos, infographics, etc.) are called Pins, and people can create boards, then save and organize the Pins they enjoy. By clicking on a Pin, users can visit the website to learn more about it and even make a purchase directly! Users will have a profile and can create subfolders within boards, such as categorized sections like “Living Room ideas” and “Dining Room ideas” under the mainboard, “Home Decor.” Common industries that have a presence on the platform include food, financial services, beauty, fashion, retail, telecommunications, entertainment, home, automobile, travel, and tourism. But if you go to Pinterest and type in any keyword, even long-tailed keyword, you will find content and others that share the same interest. Common industries that have a presence on the platform include food, financial services, beauty, fashion, retail, telecommunications, entertainment, home, automobile, travel, and tourism. But if you go to Pinterest and type in any keyword, even long-tailed keyword, you will find content and others that share the same interest. Pinterest User Demographics Pinterest’s userbase has been steadily growing and tripled since 2016. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people were spending more time at home and flocked to Pinterest for inspiration, hobbies, tips, etc. The number of users jumped from 335 million to 459 million! Here are some statistics to further convince you Pinterest is a force to be reckoned with. 80% of Millenial women and 40% of Millennial men in the United States are on Pinterest. 49% of US users’ annual income is $100,000+. Half of Pinterest users use the app to shop. Pinterest users spend 80% more in retail than those who don’t use the app. Pinterest users are 3 times more likely to click through to learn about a product or service than any other social platform. Pinterest ads cost 2.3 times less per conversion. How Does Pinterest Advertising Work? Pinterest is a social platform that gauges consumer intent by capturing people in a “future-oriented mindset.” Pinterest says, Every time that someone searches on Pinterest, they’re thinking about what they want to try next. Because Pinterest is grounded in the future, we get an earlier indication of where consumers are headed and can help brands and agencies predict what is to come for their category. Users on the platform are “window shopping” for their next hair color, tattoo, vacation spot, baking recipe to try…the future is endless. And that’s where brands come in. Advertising on Pinterest is for businesses to tell their stories through visuals. They are effective for these marketing objectives: Boosting brand awareness Driving website traffic Driving conversions Increasing video views Increasing sales Pro Tip: Using Wepik, you can design the images for your pins before publishing them on Pinterest. This will help ensure that your ads stand out and drive more engagement with customers. (We’ll discuss the various types of Pinterest ads options available in the next section.) Audience Targeting With a Pinterest Business account, advertisers can promote their most popular pins or create brand new images or videos. You will then set up ads through Pinterest Ads Manager, and users will be able to see your ads in their home feed and specific search results. Ad Creation & Management Advertisers can target users’ demographics like age, location, and interests and serve various ads, which blend into the colorful platform. Pinterest typically decides the type of ads to display to the user based on their historical activity. So let’s say I’ve been looking up inspiration for a new haircut or self-care tips, then it’s more likely that ads for beauty and wellness products would show up for me! Advertising Model Like Google and Microsoft Bing, or Facebook, Pinterest also uses a bidding model for ad placements. You will be bidding against your competitors on keywords and placements relevant to your niche. Campaign Planning & Seasonality Pinterest says that they usually see an increase in user search activity two to three months before the seasonal moment. The search activity surrounding a seasonal occasion (such as Thanksgiving or Christmas) begins even earlier than Google. This means that brands should be planning out their Pinterest Ads a few months in advance! Here is Pinterest’s 2020 report on how to prepare for the Holidays early. It has excellent stats and consumer insights, as well as visual examples of effective creatives. Types of Pinterest Advertising Pinterest Ads are all visual-oriented, and different formats can help achieve your advertising goals. Pinterest’s current ad offerings include: Standard Pin Video Shopping Carousel Collection For all ads, they will appear in the format of a pin, which is a vertical or square format. Advertisers can get creative and showcase great, branded visuals to capture people’s attention and tell a strong story. Standard Standard pins are simple, static ads in a vertical format. They blend into a Home feed and search results. The only distinguishing factor is the caption saying “Promoted by ____.” Much like Facebook Ads that have a little “Sponsered” label in the news feed! Video Video pin ads are the same as Standard Pins but just animated! It is reported that there is a 53% increase in a user’s likelihood of purchasing a product after seeing a video. Shopping Brand advertisers can create a “Shop” tab on their accounts. Then, they upload their product catalogs and turn them into individual Pins. People can then see a variety of the products offerings when they’re browsing. Shopping
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How iOS 14’s Update Will Impact Your Facebook Ads
The launch of Apple’s iOS 14 in 2021 has significantly impacted data tracking in the marketing landscape. Everyone’s Facebook Ad strategy has been impacted by Apple’s iOS 14 update. Here’s the lo-down. These are the categories we will cover: September 2022 Update: How to Future-Proof your Data Tracking June 2021 Update What is Going On with iOS 14 & Facebook What Does This Mean For Marketers? Most Significant Changes For Facebook Ads Effects on Campaigns & How You Will Be Impacted Action Plan for Advertisers What is War Room’s Take On This? What to Anticipate in iOS 15? (Updated 2021-06-17) TL;DR – What Have We Learned? September 2022 Update: How to Future-Proof Your Data Tracking There’s no doubt the future of tech is shifting to become more privacy-centric. Of course, that’s less than ideal for marketers that need data for audience targeting. How do you work around iOS 14.5’s privacy limitations and continue to collect data to keep your marketing strategy agile? The answer is Server Side Tracking. Here are 7 benefits of Server Side Tracking (SST): Privacy & Security: SST can only be used by the brand and not shared with other sites/companies Compliance: SST is compliant with privacy standards because it doesn’t track a user’s browsing activity on websitesOwnership: Brands can now collect and store user data directly on their own serversPermanence: Cookie expirations can be set for 20+ years.Richer Data: Collect data like ad platform IDs and on-site intent.Data Quality: Over time, brands can build a lifetime cookie that nests ad platform IDs, email addresses, phone numbers, and other details that the customer provides.Versatility: Data can be fed back into multiple platforms to improve advertising. You can leverage all this to feed native IDs back into ad platforms (better reporting), extend lifecycle tracking, create custom audiences, and improve analytics. So, if Server Side Tracking (SST) isn’t on your agenda for 2023 media planning, what is your plan? Server Side Tracking deserves to be on every brand’s radar. If you’re interested in learning more about how War Room can get your tracking game on point, email us at: [email protected]! June 2021 Update It’s been a few months since the introduction of iOS 14.5, so we figured we should share some updates and insights on how it’s been. A study by Flurry Analytics unveiled that in the first three weeks of the iOS 14.5 rollout, the global opt-in rate for data collection average is 13%, whereas the US Daily Opt-In Rate was averaged around 6%. Apple published this video to put the spotlight on their App Tracking Transparency stance: With Apple’s messaging to their users like this, it’s obvious why the opt-in was so low. When a user doesn’t opt-in, marketers wouldn’t have access to the user’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). This means: If Facebook isn’t able to track iOS 14.5 user behaviors, tracking pixels wouldn’t be able to serve their function properly. Facebook Ad targeting options will be limited. This means less opportunity for granular targeting, which may result in having to serve less personalized ad copy. Lookalike audiences, remarketing, and conversion tracking are all crucial components in any Facebook Ad strategy. Here are some workarounds to consider: If you have a Facebook ad with a conversion objective, consider excluding iOS devices completely. Try creating campaigns that don’t have the objective set for conversions. Leverage your website domain’s tracking and UTMs etc, to determine if a conversion occurred on your website instead! If you’re looking for other action items, you can find them in this section. We also added a new section on iOS 15. Click here to skip right to it. What is Going On with iOS 14 & Facebook? Here’s the high-level breakdown of what is happening with Apple and Facebook. What? Apple is updating their latest operating system, iOS 14, and it will limit user information exchanged with Facebook, prohibiting specific data collection and sharing. Why? Apple’s AppTracking Transparency framework aims to provide privacy protection for users: Privacy is a fundamental human right and at the core of everything we do. That’s why with iOS 14, we’re giving you more control over the data you share and more transparency into how it’s used. How? Apple Store will require all mobile apps to have prompts for iOS 14 users. The message will give people the option to opt-in for tracking. When? This change is to be completely rolled out by early 2021. The first wave of changes had started on January 19th, 2021, and we will see this continue through the first quarter of 2021. Where? Apple devices with iOS 14 software and the Facebook Ad platform. Who Will Be Affected? Businesses & brands who run Facebook Ads & Facebook Business Tools to: Target audiences Track web conversion events (click, form submission, etc.) Advertise mobile apps Optimize ads What Does This Mean for Marketers? Surveys show 83% of people have concerns about businesses monitoring or collecting data from their mobile devices. This shows that people value their privacy and want more control over how their data is collected. As a result, iOS 14 devices will have limited Facebook Ads functions and its tracking for app and web conversion events. This directly impacts ad personalizations and performance reporting. Because of this update, Facebook is working on a solution that is similar to an event measurement software called Aggregated Event Measurement. It’s meant to measure campaign performance in a way that is “consistent with consumers’ decisions about their data.” They will be using Aggregated Event Measurement to process Facebook Pixel conversion events on iOS devices. 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Social Display Ads: How to Use Them & Win Big
It’s a Social ad, it’s a Display ad, no — it’s a Social Display ad! We’re here to talk about the love child of cool programmatic technology and why it’s a great tactic to add to your advertising strategy. We’ll be covering: What are Social Display Ads? Which Social Channels Can You Create Ads From? Examples of Social Display Ads in Action When Should You Use Social Display Ads? Benefits of Social Display Ads Interested? Here’s How You Start What are Social Display Ads? Social Display ads are a type of ad that configures your existing social media posts (or ads) and delivers them as programmatic display banner ads. Whether your campaign objective is to create brand awareness, retarget or drive conversions, it is an efficient way to showcase your brand around the internet. Which Social Channels Can You Create Ads From Social Display ads can pull content directly from the channels: Facebook Twitter Instagram Linkedin TikTok Pinterest Examples of Social Display Ads in Action Social Display ads pull content directly from the channels and display them dynamically. Take a look at big brands leveraging the different formats currently offered on social channels: Twitter Twitter Post Twitter Carousel Twitter Video Pinterest Pinterest Post Pinterest Video Updated in January 2022New offerings Pinterest Social Display Ads include: Save Pin Button Pin Title and Pin Description settings Call-to-Action options TikTok LinkedIn LinkedIn Post LinkedIn Carousel LinkedIn Video Instagram Instagram Post Instagram Carousel Instagram Video Instagram Story Facebook Facebook Post Facebook Carousel Facebook Video Facebook Story August 2021 UpdateNow is the time to add your Facebook and Instagram stories into your creative rotation of a live or upcoming campaign. Why? Because we’ve made some small but significant changes that make the experience even better: True Edge-to-Edge media fills the entire ad space Visual style improvements Adjustable caption line length Better Click-Through Rates And More! When Should You Use Social Display Ads? The correct answer is: always!Social Display is an evergreen, always-on strategy used by the best brands in the world. Benefits of Social Display Ads Let us take a deeper dive into the benefits of running Social Display ads.Keep in mind your current marketing strategies and evaluate if layering on this type of ad could give you that extra “oomph”! #1: Saves Time (and Money) When you do not have the time nor resources to generate custom display creative for a holiday, event, or cultural moment, Social Display Ads can generate production-ready creative in minutes, deriving it directly from your social media posts. Your team won’t have to spend extra time designing from scratch, which saves you production costs. All you need to do is share your already created social post with our team at War Room, and voila — we have a Social Display ad ready to go! #2: Combat Ad Fatigue Ad fatigue is real. If your existing ad creative has been exhausted and audiences aren’t converting anymore, swap it out instantly with your social media posts without any additional creative necessary. This builds off of the previous point, not only do you save on time and money, you can also combat ad fatigue, so your brand will always look fresh. #3: Performance Ad studies show that Social Display Ads outperform traditional banner ads. Social Display can increase Click-Through Rate (CTR) and give your marketing efforts a boost. #4: Brand Consistency If you dip into your social feed library and leverage your existing, branded visual content—for example, by adding icons from Flaticon to your display ads or using a design from the feed and adding text—you’ll be sure to achieve brand consistency. Your brand’s creative language will be cohesive across all channels. #5: Extended Ad Reach Social Display ads are delivered on Display channels, which enables your brand to reach beyond just social channel users. More eyeballs on your brand means more clicks and conversions. #6: Amplification If you identify a specific post on your social channel that is high-performing and generating buzz, you can instantly boost it and extend the “WOW” across the internet programmatically. Interested? Here’s How You Start If you’re an existing client with War Room, you don’t need to wait for a Request For Proposal (RFP) or planning cycle to add on Social Display to your existing, active programmatic campaign. It will be an easy, plug-and-play! Get in touch with your Account Manager now. If you’re interested in switching your digital advertising to programmatic, let’s get in touch! Click on the button below: Want to add Social Display Ads to your digital strategy? Let's Do It
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170+ Power Words for Emotional Ads
This List of Words Can Elevate Your Marketing Game: You can have a visually-stunning landing page with a great layout but do the words truly “speak” to your audience? At War Room, we study our data and look for opportunities to best optimize the ads we are running and make recommendations to our clients. Here is a list of words that have proven to be effective in driving audiences to take action. Use these 170+ power words to elevate your marketing! How do you pique one’s interest? How do you connect with them emotionally? Incorporate these power words into your marketing creative copy to grab people’s attention and drive conversions! PS. These words aren’t just useful for ad copy, they’re great for social posts and blog headlines too! Why You Need It 170+ Words We’ve processed thousands of ads to extract this list of effective words. Sift through them and brainstorm how you can evoke emotion with your audience! Categorization We categorized the words into relevant categories AND organized them in alphabetical order for easy consumption. Practical Examples Aside from our neatly categorized lists, we’ve also created visual examples of how these words can be used for a variety of marketing purposes. 170+ Power Words for Emotional Ads Download Now