Pinterest opened up its Promoted Pins to all advertisers at the beginning of this year after tests found that these performed as well as or better than organic pins. Based on November 2014 polling by Frank N. Magid Associates, sponsored posts on the visual discovery tool were catching users’ eyes more than those on bigger social networks Facebook and Twitter, with users clicking on promoted content on Pinterest at nearly twice the rate.
Among US social networkers ages 13 to 64 who used Pinterest (30% of respondents), 33% said they clicked on promoted content at least weekly, compared with just over one-fifth of social networkers who used Twitter and 18% of Facebookers. An additional 33% of Pinterest users clicked on sponsored posts at least monthly, vs. 15% who said the same for Twitter and 22% for Facebook.
Females likely accounted for a lot of Promoted Pin interaction. A September 2014 study by Princeton Survey Research Associates for Pew Research Center found that among the 28% of US adult internet users who used Pinterest, women continued to represent the largest chunk of the audience. Fully 42% of US women internet users were on Pinterest, up 9 percentage points from 2013. In comparison, just 13% of males online used the platform.
Pinterest was also more common among younger users. More than two-thirds of 18-to-29-year-old internet users used Pinterest. The difference in penetration was far smaller here, though, with 28% and 27% of the 30-to-49 and 50-to-64 groups saying they were Pinterest users, respectively. Users were also more likely to be white, have at least some college experience, have a household income of $75,000 or more—meaning higher spending power—and live in a suburban or rural area.
After growth of 13.3% last year, eMarketer expects the number of US adult internet users who access Pinterest via any device at least monthly to increase 7.7% to 41.9 million. This represents 27.2% of adult social network users, 20.0% of 18-and-older internet users and 16.9% of all US adults.