Yesterday, we reported the value of a pin was worth 78 cents to a publisher; that value may have just skyrocketed as brands in the hospitality industry can now feature their hotels, restaurants, and bars to Pinterest’s new Place Pins – an interactive map for the places people want to visit around the world. This move now makes Pinterest a marketing channel for local businesses.
From Pinterest:
Place Pins were designed to combine the beautiful imagery of a travel magazine with the utility of a map online so you can share it with friends. You can access them from anywhere on your smartphone, too, which means you can find new places on the go and even get directions!
Place Pins also include extra details like the address and phone number right on the Pin so you can easily pull up useful info on a weekend adventure or before a night out.
The Place Pins functionality is not only available on dektop, but also for mobile devices running Android (Pinterest app 2.0 and higher) and iOS (Pinterest app 3.2 and higher).
Brand publishers in the travel industry have hopped on board by curating pins for themed travel getaways like the “East Coast Beach Crawl” from the Travel Channel.
Are you beginning to see how this could play out between a powerful brand’s travel board and establishments in the hospitality industry vying for a pin?
Users can add locations to pins they already have in their boards or search for new places on the map. The map search is powered by Foursquare. (The directions feature works in partnership with Google Maps, Pinterest said.)
Pinterest highlighted in its help files what businesses it has partnered with for location information:
We’ve partnered with some businesses to automatically include location info on their Pins. For example, Pins from Airbnb, Atlas Obscura, Booking.com, Citysearch, Foursquare, Hotels.com, Jetsetter, OpenTable, Roadtrippers, StreetEasy, Trulia, UrbanSpoon, and VirtualTourist will have locations attached to their Pinterest content.
Pinterest said those having troble with a particular Place Pin should “categorize this as Businesses & Website > Rich Pins when you email help.”
“People have asked if Place Pins are part of our Promoted Pins experiment. They are not,” a Pinterest representative said. “It is a separate initiative similar to the other ways that we’re trying to make pins more useful, including Product, Article, Recipe, and Movie Pins.”
While Place Pins may not be a direct monetization effort, no doubt publishers and local businesses will capitalize on the opportunity.
It’s really quite a smart move that serves the interests of users, publishers and local businesses alike. It’s something the television industry has been doing for decades (highlighting the best places to eat, sleep and drink while traveling packaged into an entertaining show), and now Pinterest is transitioning that type of marketing to its platform.
Brilliant.