Pinterest gets visitor retargeting and other new ad targeting tools

Starting today, advertisers will be able to advertise against Pinterest users that have visited their sites — giving retailers a powerful new tool that is available in other advertising suites that will help them follow users as they browse the internet (including on Pinterest).

With visitor retargeting, advertisers can place a Pinterest conversion tag across their sites, which will help it follow users onto Pinterest and better target their ads. Partners can specify which tag they want to target or exclude with the new tool, which will be available through marketing developer partners by the end of the second quarter.

That’s probably the biggest news, but advertisers are getting two other new tools today. One’s called “lookalike targeting,” which helps advertisers reach users that look and behave similar to their existing audiences. In addition, marketers are getting a new tool that helps compare their existing customer lists to new potential users on Pinterest.

A huge amount of content on Pinterest comes from businesses. But in addition to organically viewing these pins, new advertising tools can help brands better reach their audience — and potentially match better content against a user base, which could help convert them to potential customers. One of Pinterest’s strengths is that it captures a user nearly all modes of browsing the internet, whether that’s in casual discovery mode, to a more search-and-destroy mentality with search, down to potential conversions with pinning and even buying products directly on Pinterest.

Of course, all these tools put together just further refine the company’s advertising products and help grow its business. Pinterest most recently was valued at $11 billion — and that was in March last year. Since then, the service has said it has more than 100 million monthly active users, and according to leaked documents, the company was projecting to have more than 150 million users by the end of 2015.

So, as the company continues to grow its user base (potentially rapidly, it would seem) it gives Pinterest an opportunity to monetize a wider user base and push that money it makes back into investing into the company — and build new tools like these. This is an area where Twitter has actually struggled. New advertising products and better targeting help improve revenue, but in the end it still requires growth in a user base in order to grow revenue.

Pinterest, it would seem, could be able to achieve both. And with new tools like these, it’s becoming increasingly obvious why Pinterest was valued as high as it was.