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Pinterest said today that the company has raised $150 million in additional capital at a valuation of $12.3 billion as it makes a further full-court press on its visual recognition and search pitch to investors and advertisers \u2014 and perhaps one day Wall Street.<\/p>\n
Pinterest last raised $367 million in additional financing at an $11 billion valuation in<\/a> 2015. In recent years, the company has started to tout its image recognition technology and products built on top of that \u2014 like Lens, its visual search engine built into your camera. All this is a pitch to advertisers that Pinterest can get products in front of users in different ways than Facebook and Google and eventually convert them to buyers. For example, Pinterest said its ads would soon be powered by its visual search technology<\/a>\u00a0at TechCrunch Disrupt New York earlier this year.<\/p>\n So, where is this smaller-than-you-might-expect bump for a company with 175 million users coming from? It may come from some reset expectations from the round that set Pinterest\u2019s valuation originally at 2015 \u2014 and the predictions that were baked into that. According to leaked documents circulated around that time<\/a>, Pinterest may have missed some earlier leaked projections from around that time on user growth<\/a> and revenue growth<\/a>. Those targets were very ambitious<\/a>, but that Pinterest\u2019s valuation hasn\u2019t fallen south is also a sign that investors aren\u2019t entirely displeased with the company\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n A Pinterest representative said the valuation is based on\u00a0increased shares from current investors. But that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean the company is on a downward trajectory, as its user base is still growing and hit 175 million monthly active users earlier this year. A network with that many users and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue is far from a dead network, though its pitch may have altered over time as it starts to push more on its specialization in image recognition and visual search.<\/p>\n Pinterest also has to work to expand internationally, which sometimes means figuring out the different kinds of cultural quirks and behavior that come with new markets. The company says 60% of its users are outside the U.S. It also earlier today said it launched its first ad campaign in the U.S. as it looks to continue to expand its user base \u2014 which means dipping into markets and communities that might not just discover the service on their own or through typical channels.<\/p>\n For advertisers, Pinterest represents a unique spot on the Internet where users come to intentionally flip through products and discover new ideas. Pinterest is able to catch users at the very moment that they discover something new \u2014 like a pair of shoes \u2014 and follow them (and potentially push them) through the whole buying life cycle. It can help advertisers reach them when they have some kind of intent and are searching for products, saving them, and eventually acting on them through something like a purchase or a download.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/fa755_2017_brand-campaignnywild_tb043.jpg?resize=453%2C680&ssl=1\")
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