Second DataPop & Skai Social Commerce Index reveals 70% of the most engaging Pinterest Pins are product-related and Rich Pins drive 20% higher engagement

San Francisco (November 4, 2014) – Skai (www.Kenshoo.com), the global leader in predictive marketing software, and DataPop (www.datapop.com),the leading product advertising company focused on helping retailers better merchandise products, today announced a new partnership. The partnership helps retailers drive sales by bridging data between search engine marketing and social media programs. The first-of-its-kind offering brings together Pinterest and Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) data, capturing unique signals on consumer intent and identifying which products retailers should further promote across the two channels.

“As social commerce gains recognition for its effectiveness, more and more retailers will rush to capitalize on the opportunity,” said Christine Bensen, SVP, Media at iCrossing. “The new offering from DataPop and Skai uniquely equips us to increase a brand’s social commerce presence and helps ensure we maintain a leg up on the competition.”

Retailers can now identify products that perform well on PLAs and create Rich Pins on Pinterest to better promote them via Skai’s integration with DataPop’s OmniAds application. Rich Pins enable retailers to add information, such as inventory and price, while linking directly to a page where the product can be purchased. Pinterest members can sign up to receive notifications about price or inventory changes making it easier for them to shop. The partnership also allows retailers to see what products are popular on Pinterest but don’t have a meaningful presence in search PLAs. Retailers can use this information to adjust PLA bidding, creative, or ad copy to better align with Pinterest popularity.

In conjunction with the new partnership, DataPop and Skai released the second installment of the DataPop & Skai Social Commerce Index. This report provides retailers insight into the type of content that drives engagement on social commerce sites like Pinterest, Polyvore, Houzz, and Wanelo and how to increase product discoverability on the social commerce sites. To create meaningful benchmarks for retailers, proprietary data from the DataPop Product Knowledge Graph and Skai was combined with publicly available information from social commerce properties to analyze tens of thousands of Pins and social posts and thousands of consumer searches across 13 retail verticals.

The Social Commerce Index reveals three key findings:

    • Optimizing Pin descriptions with key product attributes dramatically boosts impressions.
    • In the Home & Garden category, for example, including Product Type, Size, and Color helps drive high rankings in Pinterest search results.
    • Product posts lead the charge on engaging consumers.
    • In aggregate, more than 70% of the most engaging Pins on Pinterest are product related. Furthermore, product images that don’t use a plain white background generate 159% more Likes and Re-Pins.
    • Richer information drives better engagement.
    • Rich Pins drive 20% more engagement per Pin than their standard counterparts; yet 60% of product Pins on Pinterest do not employ Rich Pins functionality.

“The inaugural edition of the Social Commerce Index revealed that only 1.7% of retailers’ products are posted on social commerce properties including only 7.2% of those products in their most popular product categories,” said Jason Lehmbeck, CEO of DataPop. “In this latest edition of our report, we confirmed that retailers who are posting product-related content on social sites are harnessing the opportunity to drive greater engagement with consumers, which ultimately drives greater traffic and sales.”

“Until now, Pinterest has been a huge, untapped source of consumer interest data for product merchandising; harnessing that data and applying it directly to paid search has been a dream of marketers and this partnership makes it possible,” said Will Martin-Gill, SVP, Product for Skai. “Ultimately, as marketers expand their presence on Pinterest, even more intent data emerges creating an infinite loop of optimization.”

In addition to providing metrics around social commerce, SCI also highlights retailers who are most discoverable and most engaging on social sites today.  Visit Kenshoo.com/DataPopPinterestOffering for more information about the new Pinterest Rich Pins & Analytics offering from Skai and DataPop, or Skai.com/SocialCommerceIndex2 to download the second edition of the DataPop and Skai Social Commerce Index.

About DataPop
DataPop (www.datapop.com) is the leading product advertising company, enabling marketers to execute fine-tuned merchandising strategies across digital channels. Its flagship OmniAds™ offering allows retailers and brands to enhance their legacy product catalogs through the patented, multi-dimensional Product Knowledge Graph™ and seamlessly distribute to leading publishers. DataPop works with a number of exceptional brands and partners including BCBG, Ace Hardware, Deckers Outdoor, Sport Chalet, 1-800 Contacts, Skai, Resolution Media, and 360i. Follow us on Twitter @DataPop.

About Skai
Skai is the global leader in predictive marketing software. Brands, agencies and developers use Skai Search, Skai Social, Skai Apps, Skai Local, Skai SmartPath, Skai Halogen, and Skai Anywhere to direct more than $200 billion in annualized client sales revenue through the platform. Skai is the only Facebook strategic Preferred Marketing Developer with native API solutions for ads across Facebook, FBX, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Yahoo Japan, Bing, Baidu and CityGrid. Skai powers digital marketing campaigns in more than 190 countries for nearly half of the Fortune 50 and all 10 top global ad agency networks. Skai clients include CareerBuilder, Expedia, Facebook, KAYAK, Havas Media, IREP, John Lewis, Resolution Media, Sears, Starcom MediaVest Group, Tesco, Travelocity, Walgreens, and Zappos. Skai has 24 international locations and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Arts Alliance, Tenaya Capital, and Bain Capital Ventures. Please visit www.Kenshoo.com for more information.

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