Pinterest looks to increase male user base with search change
Pinterest has announced that it has improved its ‘guided search’ to allow men and women to access gender-based pages, as the social platform looks to increase its appeal to men and its attractiveness to advertisers.
The brand announced on its blog that its latest improvements would allow users to search for posts using a gender filter. This means that if a user looks for items such as a watch, they can now look at men or women’s options specifically.
The platform has been largely used by females so far. According to a Global Web Index social report, 80% of Pinterest users were female by May 2014. With this in mind the latest move by the platform may be in part to create a shift in this lack of balance.
The change in search options may also indicate that the platform is looking to make ad targeting more effective for brands, especially as the news comes after a Forrester report claimed that Pinterest is yet to provide value for marketers as it fails to provide effective targeting services.
Search has been an important tool for advertisers as platforms such as Google and Facebook have improved their search options to allow for better ad targeting in their platforms. Facebook has been said to be creating a richer internal search aimed at improving ad-targeting capabilities for brands.
Pinterest has been working hard to prove its worth for marketers over the past few weeks. The brand’s operations head, Don Faul said that the group is looking to unlock the potential of its intent data and to provide better targeting services for marketers over the course of 2015, during a talk at an AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference on Friday (23 Jan).
