Pinterest Video Views Up 100% In 2020, While Uploads Grow 6X

Last week, Pinterest hosted its first-ever Pinterest Presents summit, virtually, of course, where it gave marketers a glimpse into what 2021 and beyond would mean for the platform.

The social media giant used its conference to announce several new features and spill the beans on some surprising demographic news that could have lasting implications for brands and marketers of all shapes and sizes.

Held in six different countries, featuring leaders from companies such as Dentsu Media Canada, Tilting the Lends and Havas Group, Pinterest Presents gathered the great and the good from across media and business.

But more interesting than that was what Pinterest announced during the conference, so let's crack on with unpicking that.

Pinterest's expanded demographic opens doors

From an audience perspective, it's long been believed that Pinterest skews female, and with a slightly older user profile than, say, Instagram.

Women have historically made up 60% of its users, but following a growth splurge after its 2019 IPO, Pinterest's demo has begun to even out somewhat across gender and age.

Jim Habig, Pinterest Presents: A new vision for the future

"Globally, both audiences (men and Gen Z) grew 40% year over year in 2020, bringing a ton of new Pinners to the platform."

Pinterest's evolving audience profile proves that Pins are attracting a broader audience and range of people, enticing more companies to consider Pinterest in their marketing planning.

Pinterest Premieres provide prominent placement

An announcement that should excite video marketers is the launch of Pinterest Premieres.

Video is booming on Pinterest, and Premieres aims to take advantage of Pinterest's 100% growth in video views during Q4 2020. The number of videos uploaded to Pinterest increased by more than 6x last year – as per Ad Exchanger.

Pinterest Premiere is a video marketing tool that will let advertisers place their video in the home feed to target a specific demographic, interest or category during a designated period.

Jim Habig, Pinterest Presents: A new vision for the future

"Pinterest Premiere gives you the option to align video ad targeting with either a specific demographic or a specific category (combining demographics and interests).

These packages are set up to help you drive broader reach and scale for moments like launches, brand events or even ongoing campaigns."

Pinterest is now serving more than a billion video views every day, and users are supposedly 2.6x more likely to purchase after viewing branded video content on its platform.

Although to be fair, everyone has some kind of spiel like that. So, maybe take that with a pinch of salt.

What's the difference between Premieres and regular video ads?

Pinterest runs regular video adverts as well, which play when they come into view on a user's home feed. However, Premieres offer more control, almost akin to a TV buy.

With Premieres, marketers are granted an exclusive placement in the home feed of a targeted userbase. Pinterest's generic offering is just that; generic.

There are several ad objectives available with the latest video feature:

• Brand awareness
• Video views
• Consideration
• Conversations in line with campaign objectives

Videos promoted with consideration or conversion objectives will link through to a destination website.

Trending tools can be a powerful weapon

Pinterest first launched its Trends tool in 2019, but it's been upgraded for the new year and will be loaded with more specific insights to brands and marketers.

Trends can be accessed from mobile or desktop by going to trends.pinterest.com. Select the country you wish to view data from be clicking on the down icon on the left-hand side of the search bar, enter in the term you want to search or view the automatically populated list of the weekly top trends.

At present, localisation is a bit limited, but nonetheless, many of the insights it does provide are often transferrable, especially across Western markets. In time, one would expect this to become more granular regionally, as per Google Trends.  

These insights into engagement behaviours can provide an excellent source of information to companies trying to drive engagement within Pinterest and beyond. The upgraded Tools will provide an increased depth of context and visual examples of shifts in behaviour and demographics.

Advertisers will be able to use this information to make more informed decisions about their organic and paid content plans. Previously, this data would have to be accessed manually.

Following on from its Insights tool upgrade, Pinterest Predicts is the platform's annual 'not-yet-trending report', which predicts future cultural direction.

"People use Pinterest to find tomorrow's ideas. This means that we know what's next. In fact, 8 out of 10 of our predictions for 2020 came true."

Pinterest Predicts is beneficial for brands and marketers looking to get ahead of the curve.

People use Pinterest to plan – 459 million, to be exact. Tap into that hive-mind and uncover the data that could drive 2021 and use it to make inventive campaigns months in advance.