Pinterest Will Join All The Other Social Media Platforms With New “Promoted Video” Ads

When it comes to social media, sure, companies want to set themselves apart and be somehow different from all the rest. But they also don’t want to be left behind, which is probably why Pinterest is now joining the video advertising fray.

Pinterest announced today that it will start displaying promoted videos that give marketers a chance to peddle their products, with videos that can last up to five minutes.

The ads will look different than they do on rival sites like Facebook and Twitter, where videos just start playing with the sound off when users scroll past them in their feeds. Pinterest video ads will appear as previews in your feed that play quickly or slowly as you scroll down, and stop when you stop.

If you click on one of the ads, a new page will pop up with the video playing with sound. Marketers can put as many as six “featured pins” below the videos that showcase certain products related to the ad.

Pinterest is a bit late to the game, at this point: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat all use video advertising already. That’s not a problem for Pinterest, however.

“I think there’s plenty of room for all of us to play, and everybody’s got their strengths,” Jon Kaplan, Pinterest’s head of global sales, told The Wall Street Journal.

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