← BRAVE COMMERCE
Loading summary
Transcript65 lines
- [00:01]
Chelsea Bakken
Does using social media ever make you feel like you're just yelling into an algorithmic void? That feeds have started to feel a lot less, you know, social? Well, we're doing something about it. I'm Chelsea Bakken, Head of audience development and Social at Adweek and I'm so excited to invite you to Social media week this April 14th through 16th. We're bringing together creators, marketers and social leaders in a vibrant IRL space in New York City for three days of connection, collaboration and learning. You'll get the chance to dish on the latest tools and tricks, hear fresh perspectives on the year's most viral moments, and get the slot free inspiration you need to connect with your audience and optimize performance. Head to adweek.com events to learn more.
- [00:41]
LinkedIn Ads Voiceover
Imagine the merging of trusted intelligence into a unified experience. Imagine collaboration amongst teams and across continents. Imagine an empowered ecosystem designed to deliver actionable insights that inspire growth and sustainability. That's the power of the Connect Industrial Intelligence platform to help you see further innovate faster, accomplish more. That's the connect effect. Learn more@thatstheconnecteffect.com.
- [01:13]
Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. A network of 130 million of them. In fact, you you can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority, skills and Did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads? Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started@LinkedIn.com campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
- [01:44]
Kate Hamill
The marketers that we see extracting the most value from Pinterest are absolutely ones who are leaning into incrementality, who understand that somebody should shopping for couches or living room furniture and spending months creating a board and curating and then actually purchasing. It would be all too easy to just give all of that credit to Google. But the fact of the matter is that's really just demand capture. It's more upper funnel, full funnel social search platforms like Pinterest that are really driving that demand. CFOs who are very attuned to the ever evolving media landscape know that.
- [02:26]
Sarah Hofstetter
Welcome to today's episode of Free of Commerce. I'm Sarah Hof center.
- [02:30]
Rachel Tipograph
And I'm Rachel Tipograph and this is a show that talks about what's relevant in commerce for the world's biggest brands. Sarah, I mean you've been in the business of spirit search for how many decades at this point?
- [02:49]
Sarah Hofstetter
Oh my God. Why do you think they seem so old? When was Google invented? Like 2000. I mean I have been involved in search since 2004.
- [02:59]
Rachel Tipograph
Okay.
- [03:00]
Sarah Hofstetter
You know, obviously massively disruptive space. It has a lot of similarities to OpenAI two years ago.
- [03:08]
Rachel Tipograph
Okay, explain further.
- [03:10]
Sarah Hofstetter
There were people that were playing with it, but they didn't really like it didn't have like this meteoric rise like the way it has had over the past couple years. Like AI has been a thing for a long time. OpenAI has been around for a while, but getting a little bit more into the consumer zeitgeist and stuff certainly started happening a couple of years ago. And now it's like, you know, even your grandmother is on it. So the way I look at Google, it was kind of similar. Obviously there were, and remember the market was very, you know, there were a lot of players, it was a highly competitive space. Remember Ask Jeeves? Yah. You know, that was Yahoo. There was msn. I mean there's there. Some of them are arguably still around, but there were some real doozies over there. But when you would go to marketers and say, hey, you need to invest in it, they'd be like, yeah, sure, no problem. And like, you know, what's your rate card? And it's like, oh no, no, no, no, no. It's an auction. You bid on this and be like, oh, okay, so where should I send the creative? No, no, no, no, no. It's just text and you have limited text and there are certain rules of what you can and can't do. So you're used to site sound in motion, negotiated over three martini lunch and then you go to text based stockbroker. And, and that was a big hindrance to adoption by marketers.
- [04:25]
Rachel Tipograph
Big.
- [04:26]
Sarah Hofstetter
I mean that's ultimately how I ended up getting into the business because I like taking complicated things and making them approachable. But yeah, that's, that's ultimately, you know, the origins of search. So fast forward to today and we're in the same conversation. Instead of the word search, you say discovery, Google coins, Zmod. I mean it's very similar. It's the zero moment of truth. How do brands get discovered?
- [04:49]
Rachel Tipograph
So when you think about what is the, the last 22 years of search history. Right, Your search history.
- [04:56]
Sarah Hofstetter
Oh God, nobody should ever see that.
- [04:58]
Rachel Tipograph
So many recipes, so many inflection points. But it feels like, well, you tell me 2004 to 2020, was there an inflection point.
- [05:09]
Sarah Hofstetter
Yes. Social. Yeah. I mean, think about the way people started searching on Twitter. It didn't happen when Twitter started out. It wasn't until like maybe know, the 2012 election for reals that people were searching on Twitter. First point of discovery. Think about when Amazon became YouTube, became like the second biggest search engine and then Amazon became the second biggest search engine. But the idea of search, of using a keyword based discovery, that hasn't changed a lot. But where it's happened, it's not, you know, quote unquote traditional, is it?
- [05:42]
Rachel Tipograph
Right. So you had traditional search, you had social search, then you had essentially retail media commerce search.
- [05:49]
Sarah Hofstetter
Yeah.
- [05:50]
Rachel Tipograph
And now you generative search.
- [05:52]
Sarah Hofstetter
Right. And even when you get to generative search, before you get to general search, you look at commerce search. Commerce search would be on retailer.com but I mean, big part of it, facts, business, is what happens when you're searching for products, you know, in social search. Which means that the measurement conundrum is a total clusterfuck because where things start and end are, are arguably, you know, needles and haystacks.
- [06:17]
Chelsea Bakken
Right.
- [06:17]
Rachel Tipograph
So who have you seen do a good job at solving this conundrum?
- [06:21]
Sarah Hofstetter
I don't know, I'll get in more trouble for, for saying the good ones or the bad ones, you know, what the, who the good ones are. The ones who actually prioritize something really, really boring just called marketing workflow. Like if you understand how a bill becomes a law in the way you, you know, develop your approach to marketing within your organization, then you will be able to identify what the enablers and blockers are and it'll help you, it'll bring such distillation to that. So I would say, you know, with disciplined marketers, I don't know, what about you?
- [06:56]
Rachel Tipograph
I'll name a company names, I'll name a company. And then of course there are other examples. But I have always felt that l' Oreal has made the right level of investment to solve some of the biggest challenges in marketing. I would put measurement as one of those challenges. And so I think that is a company and an organization to look at and how they tackled it.
- [07:18]
Sarah Hofstetter
That's fair. That's fair. I think when you start getting into the specific channels, it gets even more complicated.
- [07:24]
Rachel Tipograph
Right, absolutely. And obviously you have internal, you have to rely on third party vendors, use the platform themselves. And speaking of platforms, we're going to hear from Kate at Pinterest today. Her perspective. I mean, if you think about Pinterest, it absolutely is sitting at the intersection of social search and commerce search just based on the behavior that exists within that platform. So on that note, let's bring Kate onto the show. We are very excited to have Kate Hamill, VP of North America Enterprise Sales at Pinterest onto the show. And Pinterest is serving many brands from big to small across the sun. So Kate, we're excited to pick your brain.
- [08:05]
Kate Hamill
Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here.
- [08:08]
Rachel Tipograph
I have to guess that the majority of our listeners at some point in their life have been on Pinterest and have used it as a platform for discovery, whether it's redecorating their home, recipe ideas, you name it. When you think about Pinterest as a platform, and especially from the commerce angle, since it's been so much about discovery, what are you doing as a platform to try to continue to move more lower funnel and meet not just at the moment of inspiration, but also at the moment of conversion?
- [08:41]
Kate Hamill
Yeah, great question. So to your point, for a long time Pinterest really was kind of an upper funnel platform for marketers. And over the last several years we've really made a concerted effort to drive that kind of actionability. So you know, in your opening you kind of talked about Pinterest as a solution for the world's largest brands and as well as small to medium sized businesses. And what we're trying to do is really drive that kind of full funnel experience and actionability for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Shopping has been at the center of our resurgence over the last several years and more than half of our users do come to shop. But I think historically to your point, given that it was mostly an upper funnel platform, it was kind of a platform of window shoppers where users often found that the stores were closed. You know, maybe they would click on something and they would get a close up on a pin, but didn't actually click to a retailer's website, for example. So over the last several years we've worked really hard to kind of close that loop and compress the funnel between discovery and commercial intent. We've enhanced shopability through lots of different types of performance marketing products, including mobile deep links conversion APIs and other solutions like Pinterest Performance plus, which is our AI powered campaign optimization tool. And as a result, outbound clicks to advertisers are up 40% year on year and up more than 5x over the last few years. And while that is certainly applicable for advertising partners like e commerce companies and retailers, it's also applicable for, you know, maybe industries that you don't necessarily think of as actionable online, like cpg, for example. We are working with you, Rachel, and folks at mcmac to make Pinterest more shoppable across even cpg. So with products like where to Buy Links, we now allow advertisers to drive interested customers in various CPG products to selection of retailers. And, you know, they can drive that kind of actionable purchase while giving really valuable data back to CPG companies. So it's early stages for products like that, but in general the gist is to make the entire platform actionable and we are kind of well on our way.
- [11:16]
LinkedIn Ads Voiceover
Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them. In fact, you can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority, skills, and did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started@LinkedIn.com campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
- [11:48]
Chelsea Bakken
Does using social media ever make you feel like you're just yelling into an algorithmic void? That feeds have started to feel a lot less, you know, social? Well, we're doing something about it. I'm Chelsea Bakken, head of audience development and Social at Adweek, and I'm so excited to invite you to Social media week this April 14th through 16th. We're bringing together creators, marketers and social leaders in a vibrant IRL space in New York City for three days of connection, collaboration and learning.
- [12:14]
Sarah Hofstetter
Learning.
- [12:14]
Chelsea Bakken
You'll get the chance to dish on the latest tools and tricks, hear fresh perspectives on the year's most viral moments, and get the slot free inspiration you need to connect with your audience and optimize performance. Head to adweek.com events to learn more. Mama quiero life unuevo yo uno con.
- [12:33]
Kate Hamill
Verizon nos y vamos cuatro iPhone 17 sin intercambio todos vamos estrenar iPhone hi.
- [12:40]
LinkedIn Ads Voiceover
Conversion to familia disfrut amas pormenos yevo te cuatro iPhone 17s hinosa nesacit intercambio con cuatro lineas nuevas en siertos Planes Unlimited.
- [13:01]
Sarah Hofstetter
It's interesting that you've been talking so much about the funnel. I feel like the discovery part has gotten, I don't know, like maybe a little too overhyped on generative Search, because search means so much and it's another way to get the party started. But social search is pretty freaking big too. Not getting the kind of PR it used to get. So where do you feel Pinterest sits within this discovery ecosystem? And as you are working with brands and trying to get your airtime in with them as they're chasing the latest bright shiny object, how do you think about the way the landscape looks?
- [13:43]
Kate Hamill
Yeah, it's a great question and very much of the moment it's very obvious. There's no secret that search has been absolutely disrupted by this major arrival of Gen AI. And you know, I think that very much leaves the opportunity up for grabs and also leaves marketers trying to figure out where to place their bets and where to experiment. So these days instead of having kind of one starting point for search, you might go to an aggregated travel site for booking vacations or retailer sites when you know specifically what you want, or chatgpt if you are even earlier stage in terms of thinking about what it is you're looking for. I think that, you know, Pinterest really unique advantage is visual search and I think this is where we absolutely have a right to win. Most of the search experiences these days are incredibly text heavy and people by contrast are coming to Pinterest and leaning in heavily to the visual component. In fact, we have found that 39% of Gen Z Pinterest users actually start their searches on Pinterest. And that's because this is a generation that is really drawn to a visual first experience. As a visual search platform, Pinterest enables people to overcome the challenge of trying to describe aesthetics or vibes in words. You can kind of see it and when you see it, you know it, versus trying to encourage or push yourself to put words to something that you might not actually be able to even describe. You know, as we kind of started the conversation, I think brands often see Pinterest just as kind of an upper funnel channel these days. But we've really kind of supercharged that end to end performance and are tapping into search budgets these days. And I think, you know, in order to really kind of capitalize on that experience and that opportunity, the guidance is, you know, to all different types of marketers. Whether you're retail, whether you're cpg, upload your product catalog, run always on full funnel media, use Pinterest performance plus to simplify campaign creation and you know, measure for the full journey, tracking both short and long term metrics as well as kind of historically lower funnel metrics like Clicks and click through conversions as well as views and view through conversions.
- [16:23]
Sarah Hofstetter
I mean, you just said all verticals. But as we think about visual search, what is a surprising vertical? Because Pinterest originally kind of rose up for decor and apparel and food. There were a few things that were just kind of almost like native bleep Pinteresty Pinnable. What's a surprising vertical that maybe people wouldn't necessarily think would be like super hot on Pinterest because they didn't really think about it?
- [16:56]
Kate Hamill
You know, what we refer to as our emerging or non endemic verticals have actually been some of our highest growth over the last several years. Take for example financial services. Financial services is one of our largest subsectors. And that's because when you think about many of the use cases that people come to and many of the life moments during which they come to Pinterest, whether they're remodeling a home or looking to buy a home, or getting married or having a baby, those are moments when people make major financial decisions, whether it's to get a mortgage, to get a new credit card, insurance. As you're kind of progressing throughout these major life moments, that is not necessarily an industry, you know, insurance and banking industries that you would think of as being native to Pinterest. But that kind of adjacency is absolutely valuable and the, the data and kind of opportunity to reach people at the exact right moment is incredibly rich for those types of companies and marketers.
- [18:03]
Rachel Tipograph
Double clicking a little bit more on this notion that search budgets are moving to social platforms like Pinterest. When you guys are talking with marketers and you, you're hearing probably different objections and what they're up against internally in terms of advocating to their cfo, et cetera. What are some of the points that you feel people need to educate internally, their teams on why social search is something that is worth investing in.
- [18:32]
Kate Hamill
Yeah, I think most of this comes down to measurement. I think most marketers, particularly when they think about search, and for some, when they think about really anything digital, they're still wedded to last click. And some are even wedded to last click same session. But in an environment where people are shopping for days, weeks, months across devices within their households, that kind of measurement really does not capture the value that different platforms can provide as touch points throughout the marketing funnel. I think all too often there can be just a, an instinctive move towards a paradigm that has been relevant for over a decade. But the marketers that I see having the most success not just on Pinterest, but in terms of driving business growth for the companies that they work for are very sophisticated about measurement. They triangulate across different measurement sources, typically an MMM for kind of cross channel allocation, an MTA to kind of optimize within a quarter and then lean into incrementality testing for always on calibration and split testing for kind of fast experiments. And I think the marketers that we see extracting the most value from Pinterest are absolutely ones who are leaning into incrementality, who understand that somebody shopping for couches or living room furniture and spending months creating a board and curating and then actually purchasing it would be all too easy to just give all of that credit to Google. But the fact of the matter is that's really just demand capture. It's more upper funnel, full funnel social search platforms like Pinterest that are really driving that demand. So it really comes down to measurements. And I think CFOs who are very attuned to the ever evolving media landscape know that.
- [20:43]
Rachel Tipograph
So well articulated. I completely agree. You know, talking about things that are getting airtime, obviously we opened up and identified AI, so we'd be remiss to not ask you what is going on with Pinterest? With AI?
- [20:58]
Kate Hamill
Yeah. So AI is core to everything we do at Pinterest. Pinterest. It's why we've effectively become a shopping assistant to 600 million people globally. I think what's kind of different about Pinterest is that our AI is really proactive. Unlike chat, our search platforms that wait for users to type a prompt, our AI anticipates what users will be interested in next. So it curates kind of a fresh feed of personalized recommendations that are ready the moment somebody comes back to Pinterest. And that's really what enables our model to deliver such relevant content. So every month we have users coming, they're making 80 billion queries. The vast majority of these are unbranded. So it's a really powerful opportunity for marketers to get in front of people before they've decided what to buy, much less even what brand they want to buy from. The majority of the queries are also visual. You know, we have 15 billion boards saved. And I think this all just kind of feeds into the company's secret sauce, which is what we think of as our taste graph. You know, it really can kind of decode human taste to give people sharper, more personalized options. You know, when we do consumer research, the number one thing that we hear and that honestly I Hear from friends of mine who will give me feedback on Pinterest is this idea that Pinterest just gets me. We also recently launched the Pinterest assistant and that is a voice activated assistant. So now people can come and they can search visually, they can query using their voices. And the entire experience is really just designed for moments when people don't yet know what they're looking for, but kind of know it when they see it or can even just start to describe it a little bit.
- [22:58]
Sarah Hofstetter
Let me ask you totally different question. Aside from all the AI stuff, which is super cool and I always like talking about AI, but one thing we didn't discuss at all in this episode is you. We love to talk about Pinterest. Sure. And the changing nature of search. But you joined a little less than a year ago. You've been in lots of different industries. Why'd you come here?
- [23:23]
Kate Hamill
Thank you for asking.
- [23:24]
Sarah Hofstetter
Let's get to know you a little bit better.
- [23:26]
Kate Hamill
Yeah. I joined Pinterest in the spring. I joined in April after 13 years at Meta. When I was at Meta, I was always in sales. I was mostly in performance sales. I did work across several different industries, so entertainment, mobile, gaming, travel. I spent the majority of my time in E comm and retail working with both some of the largest E common retail companies in the world and then D2C kind of startups within the space. I loved my time at Meta. I think kind of the story of my journey there was every couple years I would kind of move to a new industry, a new part of the company where an emerging product offered the opportunity to unlock an entirely new industry. I was really kind of drawn to that close partnership with product teams to drive business growth both for Meta as well as for partners. What really attracted me to Pinterest was it was a few things. First, you know, the company really does sit at the intersection of search and social and commerce. I think that the intent that Pinterest has is incredibly compelling, incredibly rich. I talked about that taste graph, the 15 billion boards we have. People really come with a very powerful intent that provides a really unique signal to marketers. I also was very attracted to just the stage of the company, the opportunity to really kind of help chart those next couple years of growth. I mean, the growth over the next several years has been phenomenal quarters and quarters of sequential user growth, revenue growth. But you know, as we just continue to go deeper on this kind of actionability, full funnel journey, I was really excited to be a part of building the next wave of growth. Finally on A personal note. I have three young daughters and Pinterest really is a very safe and positive space on the Internet. And it gives me a lot of pride to work here and to try to prove that positivity and in that kind of healthy space on the Internet can be not just good for people and mental health, but for business too.
- [25:59]
Rachel Tipograph
Do you monitor your daughter's boards?
- [26:01]
Kate Hamill
My children are, I have three children. They are eight. Eight and five. And they have very little access to technology. So no, I do not bless them.
- [26:11]
Rachel Tipograph
Well, Kate, we have to ask you our famous last question, which is what's the bravest thing you've ever done?
- [26:17]
Kate Hamill
Well, following up on the personal note, I think the bravest thing I've ever done is having a third child two years after I had twins. Throw in a global pandemic, two parents with full time careers in lockdown, and it was, it was something, I'll tell you that.
- [26:32]
Rachel Tipograph
Well, you made it through.
- [26:33]
Kate Hamill
We made it. Yeah, we made it. We're here.
- [26:35]
Rachel Tipograph
Is there anything that you take from that experience, like advice to other working parents out there?
- [26:41]
Kate Hamill
Oh, good question. Everything is a phase. So, you know, whatever you're dealing with today, and that's not just a working parent mantra, it's anything in life, whatever you're dealing with today, it's, it's going to be different. Maybe not tomorrow, but certainly, you know, a period of time from now. You're stronger than you think you are. And I think I do a good job keeping perspective and keeping it all, keeping it all relative.
- [27:10]
Rachel Tipograph
That's good. Sarah and I need to work on that.
- [27:15]
Sarah Hofstetter
I don't know what you're talking about, Jo.
- [27:18]
Kate Hamill
I am so balanced.
- [27:24]
Rachel Tipograph
Kate, we're so appreciative for your time. It definitely feels like there's a lot of momentum at Pinterest and a lot evolving. Everyone watch your leadership on LinkedIn and on Pinterest. And we appreciate your time and sharing what's going on.
- [27:39]
Kate Hamill
Thank you so much. It was great to be here with you.
- [27:42]
Rachel Tipograph
If you like what you heard and you want to hear another platform perspective, go check out the episode we recorded with NBCU's Alison Levin, which was all about the future of measurement and optimizations. Tell a friend, write a review. Thanks for listening.
- [28:23]
LinkedIn Ads Voiceover
Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. A network of 130 million of them, in fact, you can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority, skills, and did I say job title. See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend 250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started@LinkedIn.com Campaign terms and conditions apply.
- [28:56]
Chelsea Bakken
Does using social media ever make you feel like you're just yelling into an algorithmic void? That feeds have started to feel a lot less? You know social media well, we're doing something about it. I'm Chelsea Bakken, Head of Audience Development and Social at Adweek, and I'm so excited to invite you to Social media week this April 14th through 16th. We're bringing together creators, marketers and social leaders in a vibrant IRL space in New York City for three days of connection, collaboration and learning. You'll get the chance to dish on the latest tools and tricks, hear fresh perspectives on the year's most viral moments, and get the slot free inspiration you need to connect with your audience and optimize performance. Head to adweek.com events to learn more.
- [29:38]
Jackie Cooper
Hi, I'm Jackie Cooper, Global Chief Brand Officer at Edelman and the host of Touch of Truth, a new podcast launching on the Adweek Podcast Network. My dad gave me this incredibly smart piece of advice Meet everyone once. As a result, I've met some of the most fascinating and inspiring people on the planet. Now on Touch of Truth, we're coming center stage and sharing the mic to experience stories of truth, insights and visions for the future that will challenge your way of thinking. Touch of Truth is available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. I do hope to see you there.