L’Oréal’s success with video on Pinterest is good news for beauty advertisers

29-Mar-2016 - Last updated on 30-Mar-2016 at 15:24 GMT

The social network has been sharing data recently that suggests beauty and hair care brands do particularly well with consumers on its platform, and new numbers show video content there has boosted purchase intent for L’Oréal shoppers.

Cinematic Pins have been a feature of the network for close to a year now. And this week, Lauren Johnson, writing for adweek.com, shares new data comparing L’Oréal’s video ads to L’Oréal’s promoted pins.

Moving image

For the case study, Pinterest looked at Promoted Pins and scroll-activated video ads.

Promoted Pins are native still images ads that brands pay to have seen more often than organic content. The video ads are short loops of video content that play as site users scroll towards them on the page. The content in question ran from September to November, explains Johnson, and launched and demonstrated highlighter product.

“The beauty brand's subsequent study found that the Cinematic Pins increased purchase intent by 37.2 percent and boosted brand awareness by 30.7 percent,” she notes. That, in contrast to “people who saw the static Promoted Pins[ whose] purchase intent increased by 30.9 percent and boosted product awareness by 21.3 percent.”

Selling with social

L’Oréal knows that Pinterest users are online for more than entertainment and inspiration. Social networks are often where people research and discover their next purchase.

“Our audience is there to shop and discover new beauty products—not just scroll for fun—enabling us to capture them in a consideration mindset when they are further down the marketing funnel,” Kristen Comings, VP and president of integrated consumer communications at L'Oréal Paris, tells the press.

Static content

Still images on Pinterest attract beauty and hair consumers’ attention to good effect as well. Posts on the network aid conversion of both online and in-store purchases. The market research firm Millward Brown notes that, “72% of Pinners have seen something on Pinterest and made a purchase offline.”

As Cosmetics Design reported earlier this month, “Pinterest’s own research shows that after consumers look at relevant Pins—image posts—online, 42% of Pinners made a beauty purchase: 49% of those purchased online while 69% did so in-store.”