Pinterest Advertising Will Be Hugely Popular With Retailers, This Chart Shows Why

• Pinterest users make the largest purchases among customers referred to e-commerce sites by social media, with an average order value of $93 in this year's second quarter, according to Monetate. (See chart, below.)
• It also accounts for 23% of all social media-driven e-commerce sales, despite being a significantly smaller social network than Twitter or Facebook.
• Pinterest has been shown to increase offline purchasing too, and is emerging as a "showrooming killer," by driving online browsers to shop at brick-and-mortar stores.

At BI Intelligence, Business Insider's paid subscription service, we recently analyzed over 25 datasets culled from a variety of sources to probe the viability of social media as a commerce and retail-driver. We published our insights in two recent reports, "How Social Commerce Is Going After The Entire Purchase Funnel," and "The New Art Of Social Commerce: How Brands And Retailers Are Converting Tweets, Pins, And Likes Into Sales."

Subscribers also gain access to over 100 in-depth reports and hundreds of charts and datasets on mobile, social, and their impact across industries, including retail.

While e-mail, search and other sources of customers, or "referrals," are still more effective as referral sources, social media is gaining. Customers referred by social media are making larger and larger purchases, $87 on average in the second quarter, or $11 more than a year before.

Pinterest's move toward ads also comes days after Instagram's CEO suggested that the photo-sharing service might also position itself as a social commerce platform for brands and retailers.

To access BI Intelligence's full report, The New Art Of Social Commerce: How Brands And Retailers Are Converting Tweets, Pins, And Likes Into Sales, sign up for a free trial subscription here. Subscribers also gain access to over 100 in-depth reports on social and mobile, and hundreds of charts and datasets.