Last night, Pinterest
announced that it was introducing Web analytics — dare we call them “Pinalytics”? This may well be a first step toward a larger monetization strategy. Regardless, it makes the site more marketer-friendly and provides insights into activity and interaction with boards and images on the site.
The newly available metrics include impressions, volume (activity/people), recent pins and most-repinnned images. Marketers and brands can also see what pins drove the most visits to their sites.
Pinterest Web analytics are available to anyone with a verified account. Once verified, they’re available from the menu in the top right corner.
One line (blue) indicates “actions,” another (gold) indicates the numbers of people who conducted those actions. Either line can be hidden. Marketers can also specify a custom date range to see activity during a particular time period. There are also “default” views for the past 7, 14 or 30 days. The numbers in the left column above represent averages (actions, people) during the selected time period.
By clicking on any of the tabs (most recent, most repinned, most clicked), you’re taken to a view of your board(s) and shown the images themselves that are most active or popular. Any individual pin can be clicked for additional metrics/insights.
All the data in the aggregate can be exported in a .csv file. But, analytics from any individual category (e.g., most repinned) can also be exported separately.
As Matt McGee pointed out last night, Pinterest Web analytics builds on the earlier introduction of Business Pages as part of a growing toolset for brands and marketers.
Pinterest grows out of the offline and female-centric phenomenon of “scrapbooking,” but it builds on all the social media activity and sharing online. A majority of its users are women with kids. This is the most coveted demographic online because of its purchasing power and influence (moms).
Pinterest is currently also one of the most influential sites online because of its strong, visual style. One sees evidence of its design influence all over the place. In fact, one could argue that some of Facebook’s recent newsfeed changes and improvements (i.e., larger images) are Pinterest-inspired.
The major difference between more established social sites such as Facebook or Twitter and Pinterest is what might be called the “commercial intent” of its users. Pinterest describes itself as a tool to collect and organize the things you love. A lot of that activity is apparently a precursor to buying things for many Pinterest users.
The chart above, based on a Bizrate consumer survey of more than 7,000 North American consumers in Q3 2012, shows that “pinners” explicitly use the site to help them make decisions about what to buy: 70 percent (vs. 17 percent for Facebook).
Accordingly, there’s much more direct alignment between the Pinterest use case and buying behavior than there is on Facebook. Pinterest thus has some very interesting opportunities to integrate commercial activity, ads and promotions in ways that are entirely consistent with the consumer use case. And, brands already leveraging the site effectively.
Pinterest’s new Web analytics should help further accelerate that process.
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