Pinterest Launches New Creator-Led Live Shopping Series With Pinterest TV
Source: Pinterest
Pinterest dives deeper into live streaming. This week, it announced the launch of Pinterest TV, a new series of QVC style live, original shoppable episodes centered around food, home, fashion, and beauty, and hosted by creators.
On November 8th, Pinterest TV will debut, with episodes airing weekdays at 6 PM EST in the U.S. and available on-demand. In addition, every Friday, new brands including All Birds, Crown Affair, Melody Ehsani, Outdoor Voices, and, Mented will host product drops with special discounts for viewers.
Source: Pinterest
During episodes, creators will highlight and showcase products from brands with shopping features, tools, and experiences that include product drops, brand collaborations, limited-time offers, product quantity amounts, and more. Viewers can interact and engage and ask hosts questions through a chat.
Users can access Pinterest TV by clicking the TV icon in the upper left corner of the app while creators who are interested in being part of Pinterest TV can apply for consideration, where they will be asked to submit concepts, potential episodes titles, their availability, and more.
As of launch, participating creators and shows include:
My - Director & Screenwriter Monica Suriyage is joined by Pinterest food creators to "unfail" the holiday dishes of cooks across the country. From a collapsed gingerbread house to an inedible vegan chocolate chip cookie, our specialists run to the rescue.
Tom Tries - Tom Daley, Olympic gold medalist in diving and knitting guru, will spend time each week learning new skills from grandmas and grandpas.
Manny Does - Beauty entrepreneur, Manny MUA brings his wit and wisdom to answering the most common holiday beauty needs in this weekly series.
Buy This - Host and comedian Robyn Schall, along with Pinterest creators, will show how products from brands like Melody Ehsani, and Crown Affair look and feel in real-time, just in time for holiday gift-giving.
In addition to Pinterest TV, the platform is launching a virtual studio in which Pinterest producers can work closely with creators to make unique content and to provide "backstage" support when going live.
Source: Pinterest
Expansion Into An Emerging Channel
With the launch of Pinterest TV, Pinterest joins YouTube and Facebook in launching live shopping initiatives this fall.
Recently, Pinterest has had a flurry of new product releases, including e-commerce features, creator tools, advertising solutions, and user experiences. Pinterest TV now allows it to expand into an emerging channel in live shopping.
Slow Adoption In The U.S.
While live shopping is estimated to be a $300 billion market in China, it has been slow to take off in the U.S. However, social media platforms are increasingly building out live shopping technology and experiences to drive adoption despite the slow progression. Even though e-commerce sales are growing, live shopping is expected to make up a relatively small portion of overall sales. Corsight Research projects that e-commerce sales will reach $17 billion by 2022, but live shopping will make up only 2% of sales.
Creators Are Key
Pinterest sees creators as the key to success, just like YouTube, Facebook, and even Amazon, who too are building their live shopping capabilities around creators.
The benefit of using creators to host live streams is that Pinterest can tap into their unique personalities to increase viewership, create connections, foster community, and drive sales for their partners.
Because individuals are seen as more authentic and trustworthy than entities, brands will be embraced more if creators pitch products on their behalf than if brands sell directly.
With the ability to demonstrate the products, answer questions about the products, and keep the chat engaged, creators can recreate an in-person, personalized shopping experience. From bringing the audience to the live stream to making the sale, creators can do it all.
Creators in China have proved this.
A Shopping-Friendly Infrastructure
With various e-commerce features like Product Pins, Shopping Spotlights, and AR Try-on product stickers, Pinterest TV launches with an infrastructure that is shopping-friendly. Pinterest users already use the platform for discovery and purchase, so live shopping fits naturally into their current experience.
Although consumers buy products across other social media platforms, Pinterest is one of the leaders, according to the company, "Pinners spend two times more than users of other social platforms and have baskets that are 85% larger at checkout."
This should be of interest to brands trying to identify the best platform for them to utilize for live social commerce and creators who may be interested in revenue-sharing live shopping deals with platforms.
It will take years for live shopping to gain widespread adoption, so it's crucial that social media platforms, brands, and creators start investing now before it becomes mainstream in the U.S. Expect to see more platforms to build out live shopping functionalities, more brands to experiment, and more creators to incorporate live streaming into their content strategy.
