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Pinterest Advertising: The Complete 2024 Guide

With organic reach in seemingly perpetual decline, businesses have become increasingly dependent on ads to generate traction on social media.

And while Pinterest’s organic reach does, in many ways buck the trend – outperforming many rivals – it’s only natural that a platform with 400 million monthly active users will be attractive to advertisers.

In this post we’ve pulled together everything you need to know about Pinterest Ads in 2024, to help you decide whether it’s the right move for you.

About Pinterest

Launched in 2010, Pinterest grew extremely rapidly to become one of the most popular social media platforms.

Pinterest can be thought of as a virtual pin board.

It’s a highly visual tool made up of images called ‘pins’ which represent ideas.

People use Pinterest as a visual discovery engine for all sorts of things, but particularly recipes, home and style inspiration, and much more. Pinterest is uniquely intertwined with the purchase process.

Statistic

89% of US Pinterest users utilise the platform for inspiration on their path to purchase and 83% have made a purchase based on Pins from brands.

Source: Pinterest

The core actions on Pinterest are to ‘Search’ for visual content and ‘Save’ pins to boards.

The home screen is algorithmically populated with other content Pinterest thinks you might be interested in – as well, crucially, as ads!

About Pinterest ads

Pinterest has a highly active audience, as we’ve already discovered.

So let’s talk about some of the ways brands can reach these engaged users through advertising.

What (and where) are the ads available in Pinterest?

Pinterest offers several ad formats:

Idea Pins are short video segments or series of up to 20 graphics, great for short how-to demos, similar to Instagram Stories.

Try-on Product Pins use augmented reality to let the viewer ‘try on’ products virtually.

Pinterest collection ads consist of one large, featured video or image and 3 supporting images. If a user taps the ad, up to 24 additional supporting images can be shown on the ad detail page.

Promoted carousel ads look just like organic Pins but contain a group of images users can swipe through.

Promoted pins are existing pins boosted through ads and differentiated by a small ‘promoted’ label.

Shopping ads are single image or video ads pulled from a brand’s product catalogue – some ecommerce platforms offer plugins for direct linking. Shopping ads are automatically targeted by Pinterest using product data to target people most interested.

Product Rich Pins aren’t ads but are noteworthy – they pull in-depth product info and display in the ‘shop’ tab.

How much does it cost to advertise on Pinterest? (And is it worth it?)

In terms of cost, Pinterest ads tend to range from around $0.10 to $1.50 per click, making it (generally) less expensive than platforms like Instagram and YouTube.

Is it worth it? Well, that depends heavily on how they convert into revenue and the value of each sale.

Our Insight

As a visual platform, there’s no doubt that Pinterest lends itself more to B2C ecommerce where the path to purchase is shorter. You’re much more likely to sell consumer goods like t-shirts and artwork on Pinterest than you are to reach high-value B2B clients – that’s just the nature of the beast.

What’s a good daily budget?

This is another question where the answer will vary massively depending on the individual circumstances of who’s asking it.

But – if you’re new to Pinterest ads – our advice is the same as when you’re starting out with ANY new channel: it’s best to start small and scale up based on needs and performance.

Expert Tip

Use a low-risk strategy to test and validate, find out what works – and then ramp it up.

How are Pinterest ads targeted?

This is all good and well, but how do these Pins actually reach the people you want them to reach?

Well, like any ad platform, Pinterest ads can be targeted and you do have SOME control in terms of how this is done.

Custom targeting lets you set the maximum bid for each campaign action. Here’s how this looks in our Pinterest advertiser account:

Automatic targeting puts Pinterest in the driving seat – they’ll automatically adjust bids throughout the day based on performance.

When should you use Pinterest ads?

Pinterest Ad Manager lets you identify one of 5 main goals, so it stands to reason that these should be goals you’re looking to achieve with your ad campaign:

– Brand awareness – impressions
– Video views – views (obviously)
– Considerations – clicks
– Conversions – particular ‘event’ – measured by using a tracking code on your website which can auto-adjust the campaign based on past performance.
– Catalogue sales – specific to ecommerce, this is tied to sales of a particular product or products.

Top tips for a successful Pinterest ad campaign

Getting maximum impact from your Pinterest ads comes down to a number of factors.

For starters, quality of photo and video content is key – Pinterest, after all, is a visual platform, and success depends not just on getting your content ‘in front’ of people, but also getting them to click it.

We’d therefore say that investing in high quality visual assets is a wise decision. Great photos and videos are needed to show your products or brand in the best light, and make them stand out.

Similarly, make sure you’ve done your homework on specs and dimensions (we’ll cover this below!) to ensure your content displays properly without relying on Pinterest’s cropping and framing. Uploading assets optimised for ideal professional presentation gives you the highest level of control over what your Pins will look like – and the impression they’ll make on your audience.

Where possible, add interactivity to engage your audience – clickability and interactive elements can skyrocket campaign performance. Clearly including your brand wherever possible is also recommended.

Finally, remember to make slow, steady adjustments to campaigns. Pinterest recommends waiting 3-5 days before making changes, and many advertisers wait even longer than this. Give things time to settle and don’t make knee-jerk reactions!

Specs and dimensions

We recommend checking out Pinterest’s full specs here but to summarise:

– Ad titles can be up to 100 characters and descriptions up to 500 characters. Only a portion of the title and no description is shown to users.
– Image sizes range from 20MB for static pins to 32MB for idea pins.
– Videos can be up to 2GB.
– Aspect ratios vary but square and vertical dimensions are recommended, like 1:1 or 2:3.
– Ad content should follow safe zone guidelines to ensure text and logos are visible.
– Safe zones are as follows: Top: 270 px Left: 65 px Right: 195 px Bottom: 440 px

Thanks for reading!

Pinterest is a unique and visually engaging way for brands to reach targeted audiences through advertising. Is it right for everybody? Of course not – but then no platform is.

With an array of ad formats from static pins to interactive quizzes, there are abundant options available to help your brand captivate your target audience.

Success with Pinterest ads is all about compelling creative assets optimised for the platform, thoughtful campaign strategies tailored to your goals, and savvy use of targeting capabilities.

Our top tips, as ever with paid ad campaigns, are:

– Monitor your campaign analytics closely and make steady tweaks to refine things and get the most bang for your buck.
– Lean into the interactive, “shoppable” nature of the platform where possible.
– Experiment with different formats, keep refining your approach, and tap into Pinterest’s highly-visual discovery engine to help drive meaningful results.
– If it isn’t working – with the best will in the world – pull the plug, and focus your efforts elsewhere! There are plenty of other platforms out there that could well be better utilised for you and your brand.

With the right creative, strategy and iterative improvements, Pinterest advertising can become a powerful component of your overall marketing mix in 2024 and beyond.

Interested in Pinterest Video as a whole? Take a look at this article next: Pinterest Video – The Complete Guide for 2024.

Published by

Samantha Ferguson

4 weeks ago