• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, October 12, 2016

Continuing to grow its ad-targeting options, Pinterest is now inviting brands to create campaigns based on users’ interactions with their Pins. Now, brands can create an audience and retarget five specific actions, including clicks, comments, saves, likes and “closeups.”

They can also create an audience built on users’ expressed interest in a specific Pin, which links to their Web site, according to Frank Fumarola, a product engineer at Pinterest.

“By identifying people who’ve interacted with your campaigns in the past, you can reach them in the future with content personalized just for them,” Fumarola notes in a new blog post.

Clicking on Pins is a pretty good predictor of future behavior. In fact, users who have previously clicked on a Pin are nearly five times more likely to take action on that Pin in the future, according to internal data.

Going forward, Pinterest is also trying to make it easier for brands to take advantage of the traffic and engagement they see on their own Web sites.

Now, after brands have added a Pinterest tag to their sites, they can create audiences to retarget on Pinterest based on actions users take on those sites.

For example: “If someone browsed a category on your site or made a purchase over a specific amount, it’s easier for you to show them the Promoted Pins they’ll find relevant,” according to Fumarola.

To drive growth, Pinterest is pushing brands and businesses to set up Promoted Pins.

To encourage them to do so, the visual search and sharing network recently began rolling out a new “Promote” button with which brands and businesses can launch Promoted Pin campaigns in as little as nine seconds. Once Pins have been “promoted,” partners can then review or edit their campaigns using Pinterest’s Ad Manager self-service ad tool. To help businesses create Pins tailored to their particular objectives, Pinterest also recently released a creative best practices guide.

For Pinterest, the change is part of an aggressive effort to sell brands on its potential. Late last month, the company began giving advertisers new ways to target pinners, based the type of content they like, what they search, and other such indicators.  

As part of the change, the platform recently began inviting advertisers with a confirmed Web site to target users who have shown interest in their Pins. That includes saving one of their pins, clicking on them, or just tapping on one for a closer look.

Pinterest also made improvements to visitor retargeting, which is powered by a new Pinterest tag that identifies 10 events, including when people search, add a product to check out, and make a purchase on a businesses' Web site.

This summer, Pinterest hired Gunnard Johnson to head measurement science and insights. Johnson most recently served as head of quantitative ads research at Snapchat, and, prior to that, was the advertising research director for Google.

A few months ago, Pinterest enlisted Millward Brown Digital to measure the impact of its brand campaigns.