With 25.3 million American users Pinterest has become a phenomenon, yet the website has not yet determined how to monetize the pins on its website. To that end Pinbooster, a Pinterest based ad-network startup has taken the reigns. The company is utilizing Pinterest’s popularity to become the first ad platform to pay members to re-pin ad messages from brands.
The program which was developed by Dave Weinberg and Ariel Remer is very similar to Izea’s Sponsored Tweets but was specifically designed for Pinterest.
According to Weinberg:
“One of the things I was using on Twitter was Sponsored Tweets, where brands can pay users to advertise. I used it for years, I really liked it, and I even made some money off it. I realized there was nothing like that on Pinterest, and we just needed to do it.”
Pinbooster was setup in March and the men worked with a NYC-based development team to build the websites beta version. To raise money the men borrowed from family and friends.
During private beta testing Pinbooster signed up 1,000 users, enough people to reach a combined 13.5 million combined people. Pinbooster has since added an additional 1,300 users.
To attract offers Pinbooster works directly with advertisers, brand and agencies, providing their customers with information about each users number of followers, location and even the type of pinner they are, for example do they tag themselves, others, etc.
Advertisers then use the Pinbooster dashboard to create a message, add a photo and provide a destination URL.
For users Pinbooster suggests how much they should charge for each pin but users ultimately set their own pricing. Users if accepted can even rebrand the message provided so it is in their own voice as long as they leave the #ad hashtag.
With dozens of campaigns under its belt Pinbooster could have a bright future ahead of itself.
0 Comments