Pinterest Is Turning Google+ Into A Ghost Town For Advertisers

Google+ is turning into a "ghost town" for advertisers, according to Ad Age, and Pinterest may be to blame, according to Shopify.

Clients and their ad agencies gave these brutal assessments of Google+ brand pages. It's worth remembering that advertisers hardly ever criticize media vendors in public like this:

Nissan hasn't invested in creating content for Google+ and is instead repurposing its Facebook content there. "The bottom line was that it was pretty bleak in its traffic," said Brandon Kleinman, director of social media and strategy at TBWA/Chiat/Day.
Pizza Hut, Visa and Heineken have created pages but haven't posted anything on them. (Here's Pizza Hut's.)
Avi Savar, founding partner at the social-media agency Big Fuel, said that aside using Google+ as a focus group for hardcore customers, "I don't find too much value for a brand to spend time, energy and resources there.

Google+ users spend only three minutes on the platform every month, on average, compared to 405 minutes for Facebook users and 50 minutes for Pinterest users, according to ComScore.

Pinterest may turn out to be a big problem for Google+ in terms of attracting advertisers. Referral traffic from Pinterest to Shopify is already equal to traffic coming from Twitter, the online-store creator reports. The average order from a Pinterest user is $80, greater than that of Google or Facebook.

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