Pinterest Opens Its APIs to Brands to Generate More Ad Revenue

Pinterest has initiated a marketing program that will help brands optimize their organic content on the platform. In a related move, the platform is also testing an ads API for the first time.

The marketing program, called “Marketing Developer Partners (MDP),” enables brands to leverage Pinterest’s Content Publishing API via partnerships with select ad-tech companies, which include Percolate, Sprinklr, Spredfast, Curalate, Ahalogy, Buffer, Expion, Newscred, Shoutlet, and Tailwind.

With the Content Publishing API, businesses can manage their organic presence on Pinterest by bulk uploading pins, as well as scheduling and publishing posts. Their ad-tech partners can further present insights on how the published pins are performing, with metrics such as repins, comments, and likes.

A few brands have already started experimenting with this new ad offering, according to Pinterest. For example, Kraft is working with ad-tech company Ahalogy to optimize its ads on the platform, while Dove and Hellman’s are working with Percolate.

“I think it’s a necessary move for Pinterest, as now brands are able to test out this platform more easily,” says Jason Mitchell, co-founder and chief executive (CEO) of social media agency Movement Strategy. “Lots of big brands we are working with are utilizing different ad-tech platforms and automated systems for their social media buys. With these ad platforms, brands can manage their social spend and performance. In that sense, I believe it’s important for Pinterest to open up its API and integrate it into these ad-serving platforms.”

Meanwhile, Pinterest is testing out its new ads API with a few select partners, which will allow marketing developers to build tools and help brands buy promoted pins. Since the ad offering is still at a very early stage, the platform declined to disclose more details at this time.

“Our API includes bulk operations so developers can build features that help businesses scale on Pinterest,” the company’s spokesperson says. “We hope to add more partners and advertisers over time but have nothing more to share at this time.”