Pinterest has opened up search advertising recently with its targeted ads applying user-searches; giving its marketing partners better opportunity to reach consumers who are ready to buy.

This week Pinterest announced it’s adding search ads to its Ads manager, letting businesses target customers searching for potential products.  This gives companies an opportunity to put an ad in front of consumers at a moment when they’ve singled their interest, skipping a few stages of the customer
journey funnel.

Using this tool will also enable businesses to auto-target relevant searches based on its extensive “Taste Graph,” which includes more than 5,000 interests.

The auto-targeting is a great option for small businesses to use, whereas marketing partners can get more specific with making target search ads to exactly match keywords, phrases or broader meaning.

Pinterest has a history of testing a niche advertising market, then if it’s successful, opening it to the broader market. With 200 million users, it was only a matter of time they opened up their advertising potential, and we’re impressed it’s been intelligently done.

This tool is not simply allowing advertisers the ability to generate awareness for their brands;  but now with search ads, they’ve become more like Google where they have awareness of the searcher’s intent, putting the complete transaction one step closer.

We think it’s awesome, and probably necessary given consumers can now place transactions in Facebook messenger chat and from Instagram photos, it’s a race to create and sustain great UX. Well done Pinterest, take my money.