Pinterest Reveals the Marketing Partners

That Will Get First Dibs on Its Ads Key step toward what could be ‘unreal’ sales growth

By Garett Sloane

Pinterest named eight ad tech firms that will help brands buy Promoted Pins through the new API.

Pinterest today announced eight ad-tech partners that can help brands and agencies buy Promoted Pins on the site.

Part of the San Francisco-based social media company’s marketing developers program, they include 4C, Adaptly, Ampush, Brand Networks, HYFN, Kinetic Social, SocialFlow and SocialCode. These vendors will build services that make it easier to plan paid and free posts on Pinterest.

This year, Pinterest has been laying the foundation for more advertising with the technology that enables marketers to manage their campaigns using familiar tools, similar to the systems they use to market on other social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.

The ads API—the software that lets these third-party marketing developers integrate with Pinterest—has been in the works since the beginning of the year and was first revealed publicly in April, but no partners were named until today. The API is seen as a crucial component for Pinterest to grow its business and gain consideration among more marketers as they plan campaigns.

“We want to work with leading developers to help brands scale and optimize their presence on Pinterest across organic and paid media,” said Jyri Kidwell, head of the marketing developers program.

Kidwell said that these companies have experience with the platform, understand its intricacies, and they have developed an effective set of tools.

API partner Adaptly said in a press release today: “Adaptly has integrated Pinterest advertising into its technology, which will offer its clients the ability to plan, deploy, optimize and report on paid media campaigns across Pinterest.”

Another API partner, Brand Networks, stated that the new system “creates an ecosystem of innovation” on Pinterest.

It certainly paves the way for more advertising, which has been an ongoing project at the company trying to compete with Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Pinterest recently launched Buyable Pins for retailers to post products that can be bought right from the platform. It also released a new animated ad format, Cinematic Pins.

The API has new tools for planning campaigns depending on marketing goals and new measurement capabilities.

Some in the ad industry have said Pinterest has been slow in developing its ad technology, but a number of marketing insiders have said it is increasingly in high demand among brands.

“The ads API brings a lot more scale. Whereas now brands are doing Promoted Pins here and there, they will be able to promote all over with targeting and no minimum spending limits,” said a digital executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The amount of money Pinterest will start making will be unreal.”