Dive Brief:
- In preparation for the holidays, Pinterest is hosting its first “Shop the Holidays” event on Pinterest TV during which customers can buy products from local, international and direct-to-consumer brands via shoppable content, according to an announcement shared with Retail Dive.
- The platform also expanded the Pinterest TV feature to Canada, enabling Canadian viewers to participate in the holiday shopping festivities alongside U.S. consumers. The social media app has tapped Tastemade to debut its inaugural Canadian programming during the “Shop the Holidays” event on Pinterest TV, where shoppers can view food and home-related content, per the announcement.
- Between Tuesday and Friday, the company said that Pinterest TV will showcase 10 hours of live programming each day in which brands will provide gift guides and announce discounts and flash sales.
Dive Insight:
About a year ago, Pinterest launched Pinterest TV with live product releases from brands like Crown Affair, Outdoor Voices and Allbirds. The platform allows creators to add shoppable tags, offer limited-time discounts and show viewers how many items are left during the show.
“On Pinterest, shopping is about inspiration and over time, we expect to make every product that a user encounters on Pinterest, shoppable,” Nadine Zylstra, global head of programming and original content, said in a statement. “Pinterest TV is the next iteration of our vision to enhance shopping surfaces and help Pinners find the products they’re looking for. We have become the home of digital-taste-based shopping and Pinterest TV makes this experience even more personal.”
In addition to unveiling Pinterest TV, Pinterest has also focused on e-commerce features on its platform. In July, the company added an API to enable merchants to oversee their product catalog and metadata, and introduced product tagging pins that let sellers link to their inventory within their catalog to their branded content.
Meanwhile, other companies have experimented with live shopping features in recent years, but it is unclear whether retailers and brands can replicate the success of livestream shopping in China. In March, Walmart expanded its partnership with Talkshoplive to launch eight livestream shopping experiences featuring hosts like Drew Barrymore and Rachael Ray.
For Meta, the experiment with livestream shopping didn’t go as planned. In October, the company shuttered its live shopping feature on Facebook but kept the function available on Instagram. Instead, the company is focusing on short-form videos.
