Pinterest began in 2010 as a social network for sharing ideas and inspiration on various topics and interests. This social network now has a whopping 442 million monthly active users. Unlike other social networks that are content-based, Pinterest focuses on pictures.
Most users who visit Pinterest don’t just go there to learn new and creative ways of doing things. Some are there to admire the beautiful, high-quality photos that come with a brief description. A quick glance at Pinterest, and all you’ll see are images. Pinterest’s focus on visual content is probably what makes it stand out from other social networks.
Advertising on Pinterest: Everything You Need to Know
Pinterest isn’t just a valuable social network for content creators and users. Businesses and marketers can also use this social network to promote their brands, products, and services. This blog post will highlight all you need to know about advertising on Pinterest.
We will describe how Pinterest ads work and offer a few reasons you may consider this advertising option. You will also learn the costs associated with advertising on Pinterest and the ad formats available. Finally, we will take you through the steps to create and run a Pinterest ad campaign.
What Are Pinterest Ads and How Do They Work?
Pinterest ads are regular pins that an advertiser pays to get placed on a user’s Pinterest account. These ads get displayed to users based on their past activities, interests, and behaviors. Depending on your preferred placement sections, Pinterest can show them in a category feed, home feed, or relevant search results.
To create Pinterest ads, you need to meet various requirements:
- You must have a Pinterest business account.
- You need to reside in a country where Pinterest ads are available.
- Your pins should be saved on a public board and be on your business profile.
- Your pins should not be third-party.
- Your pins must meet Pinterest’s ad standards.
- Your pins need a destination URL
Why Advertise on Pinterest?
Let’s now discuss why you should consider adding Pinterest to your marketing strategy.
Multiple Targeting Options
Pinterest offers many targeting options that you can take advantage of to reach your target clientele. What’s even better is you can use them singularly or combine them to advertise to specific people. With Pinterest, you can make your target audience as broad or as niche as you want.
Here are the targeting options available with Pinterest:
- Audience
This option lets you build an audience from your customer list or users who’ve interacted with your content or visited your website before.
- Act-Alike Audience
Use this selection to target users with similar interests and behaviors to your existing target audience.
- Interests
Choose this to target users based on topics you believe interest them.
- Demographics
By filtering based on demographics, you’ll target people based on their age, gender, zip code, device, or language.
- Keywords
This option is for targeting users based on the keywords they use on Pinterest.
- Expanded Targeting
Select expanded targeting to broaden your reach to users who use keywords or have interests similar to your selected criteria.
Increased Brand Awareness
Pinterest ads are great for increasing brand awareness. They make your business, products, and services highly visible to users. Once a customer clicks on your promoted pin, Pinterest leads them directly to your website, depending on your chosen link.
Cost-Effective
Pinterest ads are less expensive than most social media platforms. Advertising via Pinterest will cost you less than YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. However, it is more expensive than Facebook.
High Conversions
Pinterest ads are highly capable of driving leads and purchases. A study by Pinterest’s Feed Optimization Playbook shows that 83% of the platform’s users have purchased items featured on Pinterest ads.
Pinterest users are more likely to buy a product or service they see on a pin than on any other social media platform. This could be because Pinterest reduces the time and steps required to move from campaign to conversion.
Pinterest Ad Formats
Pinterest offers several ad formats that you can choose for your ad campaign. Choose the ones that align with your marketing objective.
- Idea Pins
Idea Pins look similar to Facebook or Instagram Stories. They contain up to 20 short video segments that appear in a full-screen mode. These ads are great for telling your brand’s story or giving product demos and how-to videos.
- Promoted Pins
Promoted Pins are essentially the most basic ad type on Pinterest and can be either in image or video format. They appear on a user’s home feed and look similar to regular pins. The only difference is that they have a “Promoted” label attached. Promoted Pins that are available in video format are called Video Pins.
- Try-On Product Pins
Try-On Product Pins offer users a more immersive ad experience. As the name suggests, these ads allow you to try on a product virtually. All you need to do is turn on your phone camera on Pinterest. Try-On Product Pins are, however, not available in all eligible countries and are only open by application and approval by a Pinterest account manager.
- Carousel Ads
Carousel ads are great for showcasing multiple products and telling your brand’s story. They contain up to five images that your audience can swipe through. Each carousel image can have its title, description, and call to action.
- Collections Ads
Collection ads are also great for showcasing multiple products in one campaign. They contain one large image or video and up to 24 smaller secondary ones. Collections ads get displayed to mobile users, although creation has to happen on a desktop.
- Shopping Ads
Shopping ads are more or less similar to collection ads, but they contain only one image or video. They lead customers directly to a product catalog and are ideal for driving purchases.
How Much Does Pinterest Advertising Cost?
A report by Statista showed that Pinterest ads cost on average $1.50 per click, making them more cost-effective than YouTube and Instagram ads. The only other two social networks that are less expensive than Pinterest are Facebook and X.
Like other social networks, Pinterest ads utilize two payment models: cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM). In CPC, you pay each time a user clicks your ad campaign, while for CPM, you pay each time your ad gets displayed 1,000 times.
Pinterest also allows you to set a budget for your ad campaign. You can choose one of two bid strategies:
- Custom Bidding
For custom bidding, you set your custom maximum budget for each campaign. Pinterest has minimum bids, depending on the ad format and number of bidders. You are, however, in control of your maximum bid.
- Automatic Bidding
In this bid strategy, you give Pinterest permission to set your maximum bid. Automatic bidding works best if you don’t know the most suitable bid budget for your campaign. Pinterest will choose the amount and adjust it throughout the day as per your competition.
How to Create a Pinterest Ad Campaign
Ready to advertise your business on Pinterest? Allow us to walk you through the campaign creation process.
1. Open a Pinterest Business account
You can’t advertise on the platform without a Pinterest Business account. Once you set up your account, you’ll gain access to tools for creating, managing, and monitoring ad campaigns.
2. Select your campaign objective
Like most social media platforms, you need to select your campaign objective before creating your ad. Pinterest offers four campaign objectives:
- Awareness
This goal focuses on increasing product or brand awareness.
- Consideration
Choose this objective to increase traffic to your Pinterest account or externally.
- Conversion
This objective drives more actions with your ad, for example, more sign-ups, sales, or subscriptions.
- Offline Sales
Pick this goal to drive in-store purchases.
3. Set your budget and schedule
Your next step will be to set your overall campaign budget and schedule. Begin by choosing the budget type, either daily or lifetime. Next up, enter your daily spend limit, and schedule when to run your campaign. You can either opt to run it continuously or on specific dates.
4. Create ad groups
Proceed to create an ad group for your campaign. Your ad group will consist of campaigns with the same bidding and targeting details. You can create as many ad groups as you want. Having a few ad groups is beneficial if you wish to test one campaign on different audiences.
5. Select your target audience
Your next step will be to choose a target audience for your ad campaign. As mentioned earlier, Pinterest offers multiple targeting options. Select one or combine them to get a narrower target audience.
6. Create and launch your ad
It’s now time to design and launch your campaign. You can use the content you’ve already pinned or start a new campaign from scratch. If you start with a blank slate, you’ll need to fill out your ad details, choose an image or video, and include a destination URL.
7. Monitor campaign performance
Last but not least, you need to track the performance of your ad. Don’t just create your campaign and leave it at that. Monitor it to assess whether it is giving you the results you desire.
Frequently Asked Questions
Read on for some commonly asked questions. You might gain valuable clarity.
1. Do I need a Pinterest Business account to advertise on the platform?
Yes, you need a Pinterest Business account to create Pinterest ad campaigns. This requirement is part of Pinterest’s terms of service and gives you access to analytics and ad management tools.
2. How do I find the best keywords for my business on Pinterest?
The best keywords are those people use to search for information on the search bar. Pinterest usually offers suggestions once you type words related to your business on the search bar. These keywords are what users use to search for information on the platform.
3. What is the difference between a pin and re-pin on Pinterest?
Like X and other social networks, Pinterest has its jargon. The term “pin” is part of Pinterest’s lingo. A pin is a bookmark users use to save content they find interesting on Pinterest. When users search for content, they search for pins. They can then save the pins they like and click on them to learn more.
A re-pin, by contrast, occurs when you post another user’s content as your own. Once you re-pin someone’s content, they get a notification that lets them know you’ve re-pinned their post.
4. What metrics does Pinterest Analytics offer?
Like other social media platforms, Pinterest offers advertisers tools for measuring the success of their campaigns. These analytics are free, and they measure the following:
- Impressions (the number of times your ad or pins got displayed)
- Video views (the number of users who viewed your ad for at least 2 seconds)
- Pin clicks (the number of users who clicked on your ad or pins)
- Engagements (the number of ad or pin engagements)
- Outbound click (the number of times users performed an action that led them to a destination outside Pinterest)
- Outbound click rate (the outbound clicks divided by the total number of times your ad got displayed)
- Saves (the number of times users saved your ad or pins to their board)
- Pin click rate (the number of pins clicked divided by the number of times your ad or pins got displayed)
- Save rate (the total of saves divided by the number of times your ad or pins got displayed)
- Total audience (the number of users who saw or engaged with your ad or pins)
- Total engaged audience (the number of users who engaged with your ad or pins)
- Monthly total audience (the number of users who saw or engaged with your ad or pins in the last 30 days)
- Monthly total engaged audience (the number of users who engaged with your ad or pins in the last 30 days)
- Monthly views (the number of times your ad was shown on screen in the last 30 days)
- Total playtime (minutes) (the total playtime for your video pins)
- Average playtime (the average time a user spent watching your video ad or pins)
5. What is an act-alike audience on Pinterest?
An act-alike audience is people with interests and behaviors similar to your existing targeted users. Pinterest lets you target act-alike audiences to find additional customers outside your current scope.
6. Who are the users of Pinterest?
The majority of users on Pinterest are women aged between 18 and 45 years old. This, however, doesn’t mean that you can’t use this social network to target men, students, or professionals. It simply means you are more likely to find a target audience of women than any other demographic.
7. How can I optimize my images for ad campaigns?
As mentioned above, Pinterest is a visual-based social media platform. Most users who go into this social network expect to see beautiful and high-quality images. Therefore, you need to ensure your pictures are captivating enough to grab the user’s attention.
Here are a few tips to help you optimize your images for your ads:
- Use unique and high-quality images.
- Use images that align with your campaign message.
- Highlight your brand in the pictures; for example, include your logo or brand colors on the image.
- Use the ideal image aspect ratio; Pinterest recommends an aspect ratio of 2:3.
Conclusion
You now know what it takes to create a Pinterest ad. Start by creating a business account and then choose a campaign objective. You’ll also need to set your bid and schedule the time to run your ad campaign. Don’t forget to narrow your audience using the multiple targeting options available. Finally, design your ad and monitor its performance.
More About Advertising on Pinterest
In this section of the post, you’ll find more information related to marketing on Pinterest. In addition, many of the links lead to search results so that you always have the most popular and updated information every time you use this page.
Marketing Agencies
You now have a better understanding of how you can advertise on Pinterest. You may not have the time or desire to do it yourself, and that’s okay. You can hire a freelancer or agency that can take care of marketing your products and services on Pinterest for you.
The link below offers the latest Google search results for marketing agencies that deal with Pinterest marketing. First, take a look to see which agency appeals to you. Then, once you find one, research the company and check out reviews to learn what others have experienced.
Have a look at the latest search results for Pinterest marketing agencies.
Ad Examples
Getting started with your first ad can prove to be challenging. However, advertising examples can spark your creativity and give you an idea of what ads are working well. The link below offers the latest search results for Pinterest ad examples.
I would suggest you take some time to review top-performing ads before you create your own.
Have a look at the latest search results for Pinterest marketing agencies.
Books
Books are an excellent way to get into the details of any topic. There are a few books you can browse through to expand your knowledge.
The only problem with books is they can quickly become outdated because of the constant changes in online systems. Nevertheless, you can always get a strong foundation and keep up with the changes from online sources.
Below is a link to books provided by amazon. So naturally, you will want the most recent publications.
View the most recent books from Amazon related to advertising on Pinterest.
Courses
Taking a course on Pinterest advertising is another way to improve your knowledge and experience. In addition, online courses can be updated while printed material needs to be republished.
I like using online courses that contain videos because I’m a visual learner. Another feature I look for is lifetime access to the course, which allows me to review the information as needed.
The link below offers the latest Google search results for courses related to marketing on Pinterest. If you find one that interests you, search for reviews about the course before signing up.
Google’s search results related to courses for advertising on Pinterest.
News
The news is one way to stay up to date with marketing on Pinterest. Just type in your keyword, and you’ll get an instant list of updated and archived stories.
You can even set up a Google alert to get notifications anytime there’s something new in the news related to Pinterest.
See Google’s news search results related to advertising on Pinterest.
Videos
YouTube is one of the most popular sites online. In addition, you can find many videos related to Pinterest. Some are tutorials; others are information-based.
I always watch for the related videos because many of those are videos you may not have considered. These videos appear either on the side or below the video you’re watching.
See the most recent videos related to advertising on Pinterest.