Pinterest is finally taking the plunge that many other tech companies already have: It has started selling video advertising.

Video ads from brands like Kate Spade and bareMinerals will start appearing in the virtual scrapbook-like Pinterest feed on Wednesday and into the coming weeks, and Pinterest is hopeful that ads from other brands will soon follow.

The new ads will show up in a silent, GIF-like format within Pinterest’s feed, and will play with sound once clicked. Users will be able to click images, or pins, of featured products next to the videos. That could, for instance, bring them to a brand’s website or allow them to buy the product without leaving Pinterest.

The move puts the social-bookmarking site in competition with the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, as well as large digital publishers, which are all vying for the increasingly large amounts of marketers’ digital ad dollars.

Over the last two years, Facebook and Twitter have been vocal about their investments in video advertising technology, a space where Google’s YouTube has long been dominant. Video ads often command a premium over other forms of online advertising, and also give social networks a chance to capture money from marketing budgets once earmarked for television.

Pinterest allows people to save links to images and videos, known as pins, to aesthetically pleasing virtual bulletin boards, and to follow the boards created by others. It has become a popular destination for consumers looking to buy goods, particularly in areas like home improvement and cooking, and for the brands looking to reach them. Pinterest says 75 percent of the content people consume on its site comes from businesses.

Pinterest, which says it has more than 100 million visitors a month, has largely been absent from conversations about videos, even as such content has boomed in popularity on its site. The company said it had seen a 60 percent increase in the number of videos saved by users in the last year.

Last year, Etsy was the website with the greatest number of links from Pinterest’s Save button. Now, it is YouTube.

“Candidly, the company just in general has underinvested until now in video as a platform,” Jon Kaplan, the head of global sales at Pinterest, said in an interview. “We wanted to make sure it was customized and specific to the way people use our platform. What you’re going to see going forward is a very big investment in video.”

Pinterest will most likely benefit from some brands that are turning away from TV, he said.

BareMinerals, a makeup brand, will promote a new foundation on Pinterest with a video tutorial. Because the product is geared toward millennials, the brand decided to spend less on TV for the campaign, said Rebecca Boston, global director of social marketing for bareMinerals.

“Talking to advertisers, there’s an insatiable demand for video inventory,” Mr. Kaplan of Pinterest said. “The viewership of TV is something that’s of concern to them. That viewership is going down, ratings are going down, and they need to find places to accomplish their business objectives where people are spending their actual time.”

Ms. Boston added: “While it does have TV, we are investing more of a percentage of our marketing budget in digital and mobile because that’s where the millennial is spending her time. She’s not watching as much TV as she used to.”

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