In its second quarter 2024 earnings results reported Tuesday (July 30), the company shared that revenue rose 21% year over year, reaching $854 million.

“We’re driving further actionability across Pinterest by launching features that allow users to move further along in their shopping journeys and take action on what they see,” CEO Bill Ready told analysts on a call. “In doing so, we more than doubled the number of outbound clicks we sent to advertisers year over year for the third quarter in a row.”

The addition of new filters such as price, retailer and brand on high shopping intent search queries across fashion and home decor verticals has been helping users tailor their searches to their preferences and budgets, driving engagement.

The platform has also made video content more shoppable with features such as Shop the Look and video shopping ads. These developments cater to the strong visual nature of Pinterest, allowing merchants to add videos to their product catalogs and promote them. Shoppable video ads have driven higher click-through rates and lower costs per action for mass retailers compared to static catalog ads, highlighting the effectiveness of video content in driving user engagement and conversions.

Additionally, the platform is stepping up its artificial intelligence to personalize the experience, improving content relevance and resulting in more engaging recommendations for users. The upgrade in Pinterest’s search ranking algorithm, incorporating new signals, has led to an increase in the global search fulfillment rate, indicating that users are finding more of what they seek when they search on the platform.

Consumers want improved personalized shopping experiences. PYMNTS Intelligence’s report “Personalized Offers Are Powerful — but Too Often Off-Base“ revealed that 83% of all consumers are interested in receiving targeted discounts and promotion offers, although only 44% reported that the offers they are receiving are relevant to them.

“We’re continuing to invest in bolstering content discovery through generative AI-based guided search, which we first rolled out several months ago for the Home Decor vertical,” Ready said. “Guided search provides a structured way to break down these broad queries in the narrower avenues of exploration.”

This approach is particularly beneficial for episodic users who may be less familiar with the platform and appreciate the structured experience to discover fulfilling results. This investment in AI and search capabilities highlights Pinterest’s effort to make the discovery process more intuitive and effective, bridging the gap between inspiration and action.

Additionally, the platform is increasing in popularity among Generation Z. This demographic’s affinity for the platform spotlights Pinterest’s ability to meet these young consumers’ demand for creativity- and self-expression-driven platforms.

Gen Z consumers disproportionately shop via social media, per PYMNTS Intelligence’s study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media.” The findings showed that 43% of consumers use social media to discover goods and services and 14% do so to make purchases. For Gen Z, those numbers rise to 68% and 22%, respectively.

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“This milestone has been a long time coming and it proves that WhatsApp is the solution to the cross-platform divide in America,” the company said in a Thursday (July 25) blog post. “No matter if you have an iPhone or Android, people want private and secure messaging that works well for everyone and that’s what we do best.”

Worldwide, WhatsApp has more than 2 billion users in more than 180 countries, according to the company’s website.

The Meta-owned messaging and calling app enables users to send and receive text, photos, videos, documents, location and voice calls, per the site.

This milestone comes at a time when WhatsApp and parent company Meta have been rolling out new features and other offerings on the platform.

In June, PYMNTS reported that Meta was planning to introduce free artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on WhatsApp as part of its strategy to monetize messaging apps.

Meta has been actively working to monetize WhatsApp, which is the company’s largest app in terms of daily users but contributes only a small portion of Meta’s total revenue.

To address this, the company has introduced commerce and payment features on the app, including business messaging tools for customer service and marketing.

On June 6, WhatsApp introduced AI tools designed to help businesses use the app to sell products and services, with the AI answering questions commonly asked by shoppers, creating ads to run on the Meta-owned platforms Instagram or Facebook, and following up with customers to remind them that they left an item in their cart or offer them a discount on a purchase they have been considering.

In December 2023, Meta teamed up with India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), an open network that makes digital commerce “platform neutral,” to help smaller merchants do business on WhatsApp.

Meta said at the time that the partnership is designed to “enable and educate small businesses in building seamless conversational buyer and seller experiences on WhatsApp through an ecosystem of our business and technical solution providers.”

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As part of this transformation, LTK has added a new shoppable video feed called Full-Screen Continuous Video and a new content guide called Daily Drops, the company said in a Wednesday (July 24) press release.

“Video is critical for creators, and by transforming the LTK app into a video-first platform, LTK is helping our creators earn more by directly catering to shoppers’ preferences,” Kit Ulrich, general manager of LTK’s Creator Shopping Platform, said in the release.

Videos are the most engaging content on the LTK platform, according to the release. Video posts gain double the sales, drive 64% more click-outs to retailers’ sites and apps to shop, and add 46% to creators’ earnings.

The new Full-Screen Continuous Video feature is a fully immersive and shoppable video feed, the release said. It showcases all a creator’s videos back-to-back for continuous viewing and is designed to engage viewers and deepen the creator’s relationship with the community. This feature is available globally.

The new Daily Drops feature is a dedicated section on the LTK shopping app home screen that makes it easy for shoppers to find and view shoppable video content that has been published by creators they follow within the past 24 hours, per the release. This feature will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

“With the introduction of Full-Screen Continuous Video and Daily Drops, we are making the LTK app a more immersive and entertaining shopping experience to discover, watch and shop creators’ content,” Ulrich said in the release.

These new features join several others added by LTK in recent months.

In June, the company added an automatic direct message (DM) tool called LTK DM that makes it easier for creators to share the shopping details of their Instagram posts with their community.

In April, LTK added longer-format videos, a Products Tab that showcases all the products a creator has posted, in one place, and Link Optimization technology that provides a more efficient app-to-retailer app click-out process.

In March, the company added Shopper Profiles, Comments and Subscribe features designed to foster community engagement.

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To that end, the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday (FT), LinkedIn is offering artificial intelligence (AI)-powered career advice and has rolled out games to get its users visiting more often and drive growth.

The report noted this is part of a broader overhaul for LinkedIn, whose members tend to visit the site less often than visitors to more entertainment-focused social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok. 

With revenue growth slowing, analysts have called for the Microsoft-owned platform to branch out, keep users on the site and create ways to generate income other than offering subscriptions.

“It’s about building this daily habit,” Editor in Chief Daniel Roth told the FT. “Once you’re on LinkedIn, it’s time to share your knowledge, get knowledge, get information and get content.”

According to the FT, LinkedIn said it had seen “record engagement” of 1.5 million content interactions per minute in June, but declined to share figures for site traffic or active users.

Data from analytics firm Similarweb shows that visits to the platform, which hit 1.8 billion in June, have climbed in recent years, though growth has slowed since the start of the year. Year-over-year site visit growth was at 5% in June, less than half the rate LinkedIn averaged in 2021 and 2022.

“In order to get continued growth, they may need to make the platform ‘stickier,’” Kelsey Chickering, a media analyst at Forrester, told the news outlet. “Just being a place for jobs and applications may not be enough to keep gaining consumers’ attention and time.” 

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote last week about LinkedIn’s emergence as a place for merchants to reach and influence consumers, with companies like Amazon and Nike garnering millions of followers on the platform.

“While LinkedIn might not seem like an obvious choice for consumer engagement as it is traditionally known as a professional networking platform, its unique positioning and robust user base offer a compelling avenue for retailers looking to tap into a more sophisticated and influential audience,” that report said.

The platform’s fastest-growing audience demographic is Generation Z, and most consumers from this age group — 68% — shop via social media, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media.” 

In addition, social commerce can be especially effective for food and beverage companies. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Connected Dining: Word of Mouth in the Digital Age” found that 37% of diners search for restaurant information by accessing a restaurant’s social media page, a share that climbs to 42% for Gen Z and 46% for millennials.

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This collaboration includes an integration in which Eventbrite creators and TikTok users can add Eventbrite links directly to their TikTok videos, the companies said in a Tuesday (July 16) press release.

These links will help users discover event details and purchase tickets without leaving the app, according to the release.

“We’re giving creators a simple way to jump into trending conversations and bring online communities together in real life through events they’re passionate about,” Ted Dworkin, chief product officer at Eventbrite, said in the release. “With this partnership, millions of people can now easily discover and attend the best events in their cities, right from where the conversation is happening — on TikTok.”

The partnership enables faster ticket sales by enabling them from Eventbrite through an in-app browser on TikTok, requiring just a few clicks, according to the release.

It also allows event creators to promote multiple events simultaneously, the release said. When they add multiple event links to videos, TikTok users will be shown the most relevant once, based on their location.

In addition, any TikTok user — including those who aren’t the event creator — can add links to their videos to promote the event, per the release.

This new feature is available in all countries in which the services of both TikTok and Eventbrite are available, according to the release.

“TikTok is a global community of over a billion people, who share their real-world joy, passions and experiences with other like-minded users,” Isaac Bess, global head of distribution partnerships at TikTok, said in the release. “Eventbrite has the same ultimate goal: to connect communities, whether it be at festivals, concerts or neighborhood gatherings.”

In an earlier addition to its platform, Eventbrite said in January that it added Instant Payouts and Tap to Pay, aiming to provide event organizers with enhanced financial flexibility and operational efficiency.

Instant Payouts allows organizers to withdraw funds from ticket sales before the event, with deposits arriving in minutes, for a small fee, while Tap to Pay allows organizers to accept cashless payments, both at the door and beyond, without any additional costs.

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By the Numbers

The PYMNTS Intelligence special report “Generation Zillennial: How They Shop” is based on responses from more than 3,600 U.S. consumers, seeking to understand how shopping habits differ across generations.

The results revealed that only 13% of consumers in the country said they had made a purchase in the last month at least partially because of a social media influencer or celebrity. That share more than doubled for Gen Z, as 28% of these young shoppers had done so in the previous 30 days.

In contrast, only 22% of zillennials (younger millennial and older Gen Z consumers born between 1991 and 1999) and millennials had done the same, as had 20% of bridge millennials (the bridge generation between millennials and Generation X). The share plummeted sharply to 6% of Gen X consumers and just 2% of baby boomers and seniors.

Those older consumers were more likely to be swayed by articles and recommendations from friends and family.

The Data in Context

With the evolution of social commerce, influencers have the ability beyond product promotion to engage in storytelling, adding an authentic layer that resonates with their audience, as Kit Ulrich, general manager of creator shopping at LTK, told PYMNTS in the fall. Ulrich said the shift has the potential to democratize the promotion of diverse brands.

“Creators are becoming this new distribution channel that can do that very authentically,” Ulrich said.

With the future of TikTok continuing to hang in the balance, the influencer commerce space could be in for a shakeup, as Nadya Okamoto (4.1 million followers on TikTok), CEO and co-founder of August (363,000 followers), explained to PYMNTS in an interview.

“In case of a potential ban, I definitely will keep focusing on building platforms on other channels,” Okamoto said, adding that where once she spent 90% of her time on TikTok, recently she’s reduced that to half, dedicating the other half to content “across Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Threads.”

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As the Financial Times (FT) reported Tuesday (July 9), the social media platform once known as Twitter is dealing with new competition from Meta-owned Threads, while Musk’s presence continues to be divisive.

The report cites “previously unreleased” figures from X showing its number of global daily active users in the second quarter of this year at 251 million, up 1.6% from the same quarter in 2023. The company had seen double-digit growth in the years leading up to Musk’s $44 billion acquisition in October 2022.

Since then,  the report says, advertisers have left the platform, in part due to Musk’s “free speech absolutism” philosophy and his removal of most of the site’s content moderators. Musk has said “drastic action” was required to cut costs. His critics counter that he has turned the platform into a more toxic place.

PYMNTS has contacted X for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

Meanwhile, X is vying for users with Threads, which launched last July as a Twitter alternative, and marked its anniversary last week by announcing it had reached 175 million monthly active users. (X says it has 600 million, the FT report notes.)

When Threads attracted 10 million sign-ups in the first seven hours after its debut, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he envisioned the platform eventually reaching a much higher number.

“There should be a public conversations app with 1 billion-plus people on it,” he said. “Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

Zuckerberg said during Meta’s earnings call in April that Threads had more than 150 million monthly active users and was “growing well.”

The FT report also points out — citing data from Similarweb — that engagement on X has been sliding in spite of national elections in America, France and the U.K. According to the report, X denied these figures, saying its monthly users rose significantly in the U.S. and U.K. between August of 2023 and June this year, but did not offer specific figures.

Last month saw a report by Bloomberg News detailing X’s efforts to launch its payments product. Included were some financial documents highlighting the company’s struggles since Musk took over. They show that X generated $1.48 billion in revenue in the first six months of last year, down nearly 40% from the same period in 2022. The company lost $456 million in the first quarter of 2023.

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TikTok announced Thursday (June 27) its “Deals For You Days,” with discounts on “thousands of products” from brands ranging from L’Oréal Paris to Zwilling beginning July 9. During the discounting event, creators are encouraged via content challenges to make live shopping videos, and the sales event aims to highlight such livestreamed, product-focused content.

“Today, TikTok Shop is announcing Deals For You Days in the US, a huge sale offering discounts across thousands of trending products this July,” the company stated. “With everything from trending fashion and beauty products, backyard entertainment essentials and decor, summer reading bestsellers and more, TikTok Shop’s Deals For You Days has everything you need to get into the swing of summer.”

The move comes as merchants increasingly announce their own summer deals events, running several days before Amazon’s Prime Day, which runs July 16 and 17, to capture consumers’ spending before they have tapped out their budgets with the eCommerce giant.

Major Amazon competitor Walmart, for instance, announced last week an event, Walmart Deals, that will run July 8-11, promising to be the retailer’s “largest savings event ever.”

Similarly, Target shared Tuesday (June 25) that its Target Circle Week, open to all members of its free loyalty program, will run July 7-13. Plus, DoorDash announced the return of its seasonal members-only sales event Summer of DashPass (June 20 to July 24), and major electronics retailer Best Buy is in the middle of its Member Deals Days (ending July 10).

Consumers look for these kinds of sales. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Summer Deal Days 2023: How Amazon Still Dominates,” which analyzed data last year from a survey of over 5,500 Amazon Prime members and Walmart shoppers, found that 40% of consumers made purchases during Amazon’s Prime Day event last summer. Plus, 20% did so during Walmart+ Week. Plus, these events are growing in adoption — those figures were up from 36% and 11%, respectively, in 2022.

Adoption will likely only continue to rise, with financial instability greater than it was at this time last year. PYMNTS Intelligence research from the latest installment of the “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report” series found that 65% of the U.S. population now live paycheck to paycheck, the highest it has been in two years. Plus, the May survey of more than 2,400 U.S. consumers revealed that 21% of consumers do so with difficulties paying their bills, up from 15% a year prior.

Consequently, shoppers are looking for more affordable options. The February/March installment of the New Reality Check series revealed that half of consumers have traded down to less expensive merchants in response to inflation.

“Consumers take no solace in the month-over-month decline in [consumer price index] and the flat showing in June,” PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster observed in a June 21 feature. “Regardless of income, all consumers feel caught in the struggle between persistently high prices and moderating wage growth.”

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Amazon, for instance, has garnered a following of 31 million on the platform. The company posts about product updates, sales events and shopping inspirations in addition to the typical, more hiring- and retention-based content. Similarly, Nike posts to its 6 million followers about brand and product news, and Patagonia communicates with its 1 million followers about the brand’s eco-centric ethos with relevant, nature-focused content.

While LinkedIn might not seem like an obvious choice for consumer engagement as it is traditionally known as a professional networking platform, its unique positioning and robust user base offer a compelling avenue for retailers looking to tap into a more sophisticated and influential audience.

The platform touts a membership base of more than 1 billion, with estimates of its monthly active user base generally putting the count in the low hundreds of millions. Plus, the network is gaining share with the types of consumers who tend to be open to social commerce, with the platform’s fastest-growing audience demographic being Generation Z.

Most Gen Z consumers shop via social media. The PYMNTS Intelligence study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media” drew from a survey of nearly 3,000 United States consumers about how they browse for and buy goods and services on social media platforms. Supplemental data from the report revealed that 68% of Gen Z consumers searched for or purchased products on social media, compared to just 43% of the population overall.

LinkedIn’s audience of highly engaged professionals tends to have more cash to burn, making its user base particularly appealing to merchants.

“Not only are [LinkedIn members] more likely to own (or plan to own) more high-consideration goods (think cars, tech devices or mutual funds), members also report that spending more time on LinkedIn further nudges them to save for or purchase those goods,” wrote Regina Dowdell, senior content solutions consultant at LinkedIn, noting that users tend to trust content on the platform.

One of the primary ways LinkedIn influences consumer behavior is through thought leadership. Retailers can use the platform to establish themselves as industry experts, sharing insights, trends and innovations. By positioning themselves as thought leaders, retailers can build trust and credibility with a highly targeted audience. Airbnb, for instance, shares travel content with its 3 million followers, while Red Bull highlights athletic and adventure-seeking stories to its 1 million followers.

Additionally, social commerce can be especially effective for food and beverage brands. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Connected Dining: Word of Mouth in the Digital Age” found that 37% of diners search for restaurant information by accessing content from a restaurant’s social media page. That share rises to 42% for Gen Z and 46% for millennials.

Starbucks, for its part, posts to its 3 million LinkedIn followers about menu updates, and McDonald’s does the same for its 2 million.

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That’s due to a new feature called board sharing, designed to court the world’s youngest and most-digitally engaged generation.

“Gen Z makes up over 40% of our global monthly users on Pinterest and are our most engaged generation, with a significant increase in the number of boards created by Gen Z Pinners compared to last year,” Rachel Hardy, director of consumer product marketing at Pinterest, said in a Tuesday (June 25) news release.

“We are enhancing the board features based on user feedback and, this year, board sharing is one of our critical investments as users value the ability to share their creative processes on different platforms and find inspiration from others.”

Gen Z users, the company argues, use Pinterest as “a space for self-discovery and expression,” which has led to a phenomenon dubbed “mecore.”

Searches around “mecore” have jumped by 565% year over year on Pinterest, the company has said, while boards with the title “mecore” have increased by 255% since last year.

Pinterest’s assertions about digital engagement among members of Gen Z are borne out by the latest edition of PYMNTS “How the World Does Digital” report.

The research from that report shows that Gen Z consumers engaged in 23.5 digital activities per month, compared to 9.6 per baby boomers. Video streaming, meanwhile, was the most popular type of digital activity, with nearly 60% of all consumers engaging in it at least weekly.

Other platforms are also making efforts to reach out to these younger users. For example, Facebook said late last month that it had seen the highest growth among young adult users in three years, with the company making changes to its core product to help them with things like dating, shopping and job hunting.

And it’s not just social media platforms courting Gen Z. Additional research by PYMNTS Intelligence finds that 62% of financial technology companies (FinTechs) are developing products with Gen Z consumers in mind.

However, roughly 70% of FinTechs also say Gen Z consumers just do not make enough deposits to justify the effort to attract their business.

“Yet, this demographic group would appear to be an ideal segment for FinTechs to pursue,” PYMNTS wrote recently.

“After all, Gen Z is made up of predominantly digital-first consumers who value the convenience of mobile banking and digital payments, something many FinTechs recognize.”

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