Pinterest’s valuation continues to soar and new developments promise a profit from commerce brands. But brand activity on the platform shows a different story. L2’s latest Hair Care & Color study finds that even though 70% of brands are present on the platform, 37% of those brands haven’t posted new content in the past 90 days. That is the highest percentage of inactive brands on a platform followed by Twitter (11%).
Even though L2 has been lukewarm on Pinterest, presence on the platform has benefits, especially for Beauty, Hair Care, and Apparel brands. Pinterest users who pin an item in those categories demonstrate a higher likelihood of purchase than other social media users, which makes up for its small community sizes (3,000 average). Pinterest also is highly visible in category searches, which highlights the importance of presence and activity.
Rich pins are one way for brands to forge a path from Pinterest to commerce by allowing brands to link to product pages and include pricing information, but only 12% of brands in the Hair Care Index use this new feature. Aveda is the only brand that links to its DTC page from pins, and Zoos and Phyto regularly link to e-commerce partners (Sally beauty and Sephora, respectively) from pins.