Pinterest Says Interest in Shoppable Posts Jumped By 50%

Pinterest says its efforts to become a shopping destination are bearing fruit.

While releasing its earnings Tuesday (Aug. 1), the social media platform said click rates and saves on posts linked to shoppable items rose 50%, exceeding its first quarter’s growth rate.

Whether people would shop on Pinterest “was a big question a year ago,” CEO Bill Ready said during a call with analysts. “We have answered that question definitively.”

“Shopping is working on Pinterest, and we’ve had some great partnerships that are aiding that,” Ready said in an interview Tuesday with Yahoo Finance. “There’ll be more of those to go.”

In a separate interview with CNBC, the chief executive said that more than half of the platform’s users say they are there to shop.

Earlier this year, Pinterest signed a multiyear agreement with Amazon to enhance its shoppable content effort, a move that made Amazon Pinterest’s first third-party advertising partner.

As PYMNTS wrote at the time, the agreement follows the increasing popularity of video-based platforms like TikTok moving Pinterest to update its image pinboard. As a result, the platform debuted Idea Pins that prioritize video content, while also putting a  greater emphasis on content created by its users.

The move also aligns with PYMNTS research from late last year, which predicted that online sellers would prioritize social media channels in 2023. The research showed that about 47.9% of online sellers planned to depend more on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to sell and market their products.

That report, “Online Sellers: The Future is Multichannel,” argues that a social media presence is all but mandatory in today’s online retail space, with many alternatives coming on the market with expanded eCommerce offerings.

Meanwhile, Pinterest on Tuesday reported that its monthly active user base had reached 465 million, an 8% increase the company attributed to improved post and ad recommendations made possible by artificial intelligence (AI).

“In Q2, we continued to build momentum with consumers and advertisers while further accelerating our pace of innovation,” Ready said in a statement. “Over the past year, we’ve been laser-focused on our key differentiators, and we’re seeing results.”