Pinterest to roll out ads in move seen to draw retailers

Pinboard-style photo-sharing website Pinterest plans to introduce promoted pins in a bid to monetise itself.

The company announced on Thursday that it would start experimenting with promoting certain pins from a select group of businesses.

The announcement came via a blog post from Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann who assured the site's users that the move would not see the site descend into ad madness.

"I know some of you may be thinking, 'Oh great ... here come the banner ads,' " he wrote, "but we're determined to not let that happen."

Silbermann further went on to promise that the ads would be "tasteful," with "no flashy banners or pop-up ads."

He added, the ads would also be transparent and viewers would always be informed when they were  viewing paid promotions.

The ads would also be relevant and would be marketing products the viewer actually was interested in -- and would be improved upon feedback, too.

According to commentators, the move signalled a shift from web growth to mobile growth and business for Pinterest.

The initial tests of ads would be in search results and category feeds, with the format following in the footsteps of other social advertising successes like Facebook and Twitter, according to TechCrunch.

Both similarly allowed businesses to expand the reach of their organic content by paying for ''promotion'', TechCrunch said.

The company was founded in 2009 to let people collect and share links and photos of things they loved.

The years 2011 and 2012 saw Pinterest work with analytics company SkimLinks to track traffic it was driving to ecommerce sites and earn small referral fees.

Though it was believed the company was earning significant revenue from the partnership, TechCrunch had heard that the income was relatively small. Pinterest discontinued working with SkimLinks some time back, lending credence to the idea that referral fees were not enough to support the company long-term.

According to analytics firm comScore, Pinterest.com logged 46.9 million monthly unique visitors  worldwide as of July, down from a high of 54.2 million in April. It added, Pinterest.com logged 3.8 million average daily visitors in July.