Pinterest to launch "Promoted pins"

After a great success with heavily funded 3 year-old image and video sharing
Pinterest is now planning to experiment with paid advertising.This product is called "promoted pins".
Business will be able to pay show certain pins at the top of search results and category feeds.
In a blog post announcing the product, Pinterest founder and CEO Ben Silbermann promised the ads would be


Pinterest is promising

Tasteful. No flashy banners or pop-up ads.

Transparent. We’ll always let you know if someone paid for what you see, or where you see it.

Relevant. These pins should be about stuff you’re actually interested in, like a T-shirt that’s your style.

Silbermann says Pinterest is only exploring promoted pins with "select businesses" for now, but we can expect this to be rolled out more broadly in the near future.

Similar to promoted posts on Facebook, or sponsored Tweets on Twitter, Pinterest will be promting certain pins from a select group of businesses.  Nothing was disclosed on which businesses they are piloting the program with, but Pinterest promises they will be tasteful, transparent and relevelant. They also promise to improve the program with user feedback.

With such a large audience base, advertising is an obvious place for Pinterest to seek out revenue.