Pinterest is reportedly asking for commitments of between $1 million and $2 million from interested marketers that want to buy ads on the popular platform and is also planning to charge from $30 to $40 for 1000 views (CPM) of promoted pins.
According to the article on the Business Insider, Pinterest has been testing the promotion product for a select group of marketers for free and has been allowing brands to include shopping information in their pins in order to let people know how much the products in the pin cost and where they can buy them. Test pins have been marked with the text “promoted pin” and feature an icon at the bottom of the post.
The pricing makes it obvious that Pinterest plans to offer premium advertising that will resemble the Instagram package.
Every pin is worth an average of $0.78 to the brand whose merchandise is featured in it and a promoted Pinterest search ad would allow a retail brand to show its product to someone that is likely to be in the market to make a purchase.
Pinterest does not generate any revenue but it has managed to raise $564 million from investors. The company now has over 70 million users and is valued at $3.8 billion.
An article on Ad Age reveals that Pinterest’s premium pricing model resembles the way Apple brought iAd to market in 2010 when the high starting price of $1 million that came down substantially in the years that followed made prospective buyers flinch.
“We’ve been experimenting with promoted pins with a small number of advertisers since last fall,” a spokesperson said, in a statement provided to Ad Age. “We are continuing these tests, but we don’t have any announcements to make at this time.”