When Pinterest Lens first came on the scene back in 2017, it was the latest step in Pinterest’s transformation from a social network to a visual search tool. According to Pinterest, its Lens “lets you use the camera in your Pinterest app to discover ideas inspired by objects you see out in the real world.” It has now been over a year since Pinterest announced the launch of its Lens capabilities. How has this technology evolved along the way?
Pinterest capitalized on visual search to help increase its ability to rake in money as an advertising platform. Last fall, Pinterest released tools that allowed marketers to place search ads on its platform without a salesperson or help desk, and began testing an autotargeting feature to extend keyword campaigns into more searches. Thanks to Pinterest’s visual search technology and image recognition, ads automatically show up next to visually related products.
Pinterest then released capabilities for advertisers that allowed them to list fashion and home décor pins, which users can then find by highlighting specific parts of an image and shopping the look. The launch was intended to “bring together text and image searches in one query” and encouraged people to use the Pinterest Lens for inspiration. The more people that searched and used the tool, the better the Lens became.
Search engines are getting better at understanding different components of images leading to more reliable results. The Pinterest visual search technology now understands more than five times as many things as it did when it initially launched. Today, there are reportedly 600 million Pinterest Lens searches every month, a figure that has seen consistent growth since the Lens was first released.
The Pinterest blog states “90% of weekly Pinterest users’ purchase decisions are influenced by things they’ve encountered on Pinterest.” Recent advancements in visual search technology are already making it much easier for consumers to either buy the product captured or search for similar items. According to an Internet Trends Report, more than half of Pinterest’s audience use the site to find and shop for products, compared with 12% for Facebook and 9% for Twitter. Gartner research predicts that “by 2021, early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by as much as 30 percent.”
Visual search technology is continually improving and expanding across platforms. Ben Wood from the Search Engine Journal writes, “With visual search technology being integrated into apps and websites as well as visual search functionality being built in to platforms such as Pinterest, Bing, and Google, visual search is changing the search marketing landscape as we know it.” The most popular visual search technologies are the Google Lens and Pinterest Lens, but Amazon and Bing are among a growing list of major players investing in this area. Unlike Google, which already has an abundance of search products and features to maintain, Pinterest can continue to focus solely on the development and monetization of its visual search engine.