Pinterest may be one of the leading social platforms around, but its forays into advertising have been slow. The company took its time testing “Promoted Pins” to make sure they didn’t negatively impact users. When the ads finally were rolled out to all, they were also incredibly simple, with limited targeting and customization.

The company is finally expanding its ad platform with new targeting features that will give advertisers entirely new ways to connect with Pinterest’s more than 100 million monthly active users, according to a recent announcement.

Now, you can focus your ad efforts to make sure you are only targeting users who are likely to be interested in your brand and your products, improving the ad experience for both users and advertisers at the same time.

Customer List Targeting

Much like Facebook’s Custom Audiences, Pinterest’s custom list targeting is designed to help you connect with your existing customers on the social image board by targeting users from a list of your customers using email addresses or mobile ad IDs. Pinterest will then match your list with its own user database so you can serve them ads directly.

Visitor Retargeting

Retargeting is a great way to keep potentially interested visitors to your site engaged with your company even if they don’t initially make a purchase. With Pinterest’s visitor retargeting option, you can tag users that come to your site and serve them ads that are particularly suited to their interests and needs.

According to Pinterest, visitor retargeting has increased click-through rates (CTR) by as much as 3x for those who were granted early access to the option.

To use visitor retargeting, you will have to add Pinterest’s conversion tag to your site, which will allow you to tag or exclude users who have:

• Landed on your homepage
• Signed up for something
• Added an item to their cart
• Checked out

Lookalike Targeting

You might be familiar with this targeting option thanks to the version of it in use at Facebook called Lookalike Audiences. Lookalike targeting lets you reach out to groups of people based on their behaviors and interests specifically based on the activities of your customers.

Pinterest reports that this option increased CTRs for early-access users by up to 65% and increased reach for ads by nearly 30x.