In light of Pinterest’s recent IPO, I wanted to point out an article from Mobile Marketer: https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/google-pushes-deeper-into-visual-search-with-shoppable-ads-in-images/549957/ .
Monetizing Pinterest will largely come down to showing relevant ads within user searches – for example, showing an ad for wedding supplies within an user search for wedding ideas. However, we see Google moving into this business as well, as highlighted in the above article. Google will be showing more ads within Google Images searches – but more importantly – those ads will be image based, which should help clickthrough and purchase rates.
I fully expect Pinterest to thrive and grow, but we’ll be seeing a fair bit of competition from Google and others as well.