As a last-touch channel, social networks have doubled in visit share to US retail sites in the past two years. And the overwhelming majority of social referrals come from smartphones, according to Q1 2019 data from Adobe Digital Insights.

In the latest episode of "Behind the Numbers," eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman assesses Pinterest's recent IPO. How did it fair? What does it mean for the company going forward—and what might trip it up along the way?

Despite the company’s efforts to increase their male audience, we predict 70% of Pinterest users will still be female by the end of the year. In today’s “eMarketer Daily Forecast,” junior forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam explains why. Tune in.

Social commerce only drives a fraction of ecommerce sales, but it's picking up speed. Between 2016 and 2018, social networks as a last-touch channel have doubled in visit share to US retail sites, according to Q3 2018 data from Adobe.

Pinterest made waves in late February as the not-so-well-kept secret leaked that it’s finally taking steps toward its initial public offering, which is anticipated sometime mid-year. While Pinterest is later to the public markets than other major digital ad platforms, the company has opted for a more deliberate approach to building its business than the typical Silicon Valley modus operandi of “move fast and break things.”

Influencer marketing is growing around the world, and a significant amount of activity is migrating to Instagram Stories. However, fraud is also growing, and that threatens the authenticity of influencer marketing.

Every week on eMarketer’s “Behind the Numbers” podcast, we take a few minutes to discuss some of the most intriguing headlines of the past seven days. This week, we're chatting about misinformation and how digital platforms are seeking to slow it, Pinterest's plan to go public, and landmark shift in ad spending.

In the past few years, some key ecommerce players—including Amazon, China’s Alibaba, and eBay—have rolled out visual search tools that allow users to submit images as queries instead of text.

While the number of US marketers that use Pinterest continues to steadily rise, the platform is trying to increase advertisers’ interest by expanding its search products and diversifying its audience by adding more male users.

Social commerce has reinvented itself many times over but has yet to prove itself as a solid sales tactic. Next year, the version that has been evolving during 2018 could finally take hold.

Popular social networking app Weibo (Sina Weibo) will continue its double-digit growth this year in China, according to eMarketer’s first forecast on Weibo usage. This year, Weibo usage will grow more than 17% to 340.1 million people in China. By the end of 2018, 24.6% of China’s population will be a Weibo user.

This year, 77.4 million people in the US—or nearly a quarter of the population—will use Pinterest, a 7.0% increase from 2017, according to eMarketer estimates.

Based on consumer surveys, the holiday season is shaping up to be more mobile-driven and social media-influenced than in years past. According to PwC, the 2018 holiday shopping period is on track to be one of the strongest since 2005.

eMarketer expects the social network to generate more than $500 million in US ad revenues this year, a 43.8% change from last year.

Recent improvements in computer-vision technology have finally made this dream a reality, and the biggest technology companies, including Pinterest, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and eBay, now have visual search tools.

Visual search is evolving rapidly from a niche tool to a more broadly offered and used tool for finding information. This report looks at how consumers use visual search and how marketers should utilize it.

In the latest episode of "Behind the Numbers," eMarketer analysts Andrew Lipsman and Yory Wurmser chat with Pinterest's retail vertical lead, Amy Vener, about how retail partners are measuring attribution on the social platform and about its new visual search and discovery tools.

Pinterest launched visual search three years ago, and it now sees 600 million visual searches per month. eMarketer's Yory Wurmser spoke with Omar Seyal, head of discovery product at Pinterest, about what the platform has learned about consumer visual search behavior.

In the latest episode of "Behind the Numbers," we put Facebook to one side for a second and discuss the other social platforms. How has a dip in user growth affected Snap’s ad revenue potential? What’s behind Twitter’s rebound? And how much money does Pinterest make from digital advertising?