Pinterest is adding third-party influencer content to its feeds

Influencers on affiliate shopping platform LTK may soon get access to a huge new audience: Pinterest users. Under a new partnership announced today, high-performing image posts on LTK will automatically be cross-posted to Pinterest; the pilot program is expected to expand in the coming months to more creators and content formats.

LTK is a huge part of influencer marketing and online shopping in general — nearly 40 percent of Gen Z women in the US use it, according to the company, and it’s standard for influencers to push audience members toward their LTK page so they can earn affiliate commissions on purchases. The Pinterest pilot will gradually roll out over the next few months, and LTK influencers don’t need to opt-in; they just need to post “high-quality, styled” images on LTK.

When an LTK post is shared to Pinterest, a link to the influencer’s profile and their tagged products will follow. The hope, at least for content creators, is that getting pushed to Pinterest’s millions of users will result in more affiliate earnings. Pinterest is popular among people looking for inspiration — users in the middle of a home renovation or someone looking for hairstyle ideas, for example — and some of them are expressly looking for something to buy. The platform already has ads, but influencer posts could be more enticing to users than something coming directly from a brand.

The move to pull in influencer content from other platforms connects to a larger issue Pinterest that has been struggling with: the deluge of AI-generated content that has flooded its feeds. In April, the company said it was working on the problem and introduced new tools to detect and label AI content. The company is also testing the ability to allow users to see fewer posts with AI.