Pinterest Announces First Ad Product: Promoted Pins

It's been a long time coming: Pinterest, the heavily funded image and video-sharing network, announced Thursday that it is going to begin experimenting with paid advertising.

The product is called "promoted pins," and it borrows from Twitter's and Facebook's ad products of the same name. Essentially, businesses will be able to pay to 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 (pictured above) promised the ads would be "tasteful" and "transparent." There will be no "flashy banners" or pop-up ads, he wrote, and the site will clearly differentiate sponsored and organic pins. They'll also aim to be relevant: A search for "Halloween" might produce a pin of a Darth Vader outfit from an online costume shop. Read more...