Whether it’s fashion, travel, decor, or cooking — Pinterest is the ultimate source of inspiration for many. And can you run ads in this “app for visually discovering ideas for small and large projects”? Absolutely! And you definitely should. In this article, you’ll learn what makes Pinterest advertising so interesting and what’s important when using them.
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The Target Audience on Pinterest
Pinterest is quite unique in terms of its audience: According to statistics, 67% of users are female, 24% male, and 9% did not provide gender information. No other social media platform has such a strong gender imbalance, although Pinterest has actively worked to attract more male and non-binary users.
For the advertising audience, the gender distribution is even more pronounced: In January 2022, Pinterest’s self-service ad tools identified the female audience at 76.7%, the male audience at 15.3%, and the rest as unspecified. In addition to Generation X and Millennials, more and more users from Generation Z are signing up for Pinterest.
Moreover, the behavior of Pinterest users is also telling:
- 67% of users visit Pinterest when starting a new project.
- 58% of users try new things they’ve found on Pinterest.
- 77% of users search on Pinterest for inspiration for their next purchase.
What we see is that Pinterest users are actively searching for something — and they are much more likely to purchase the right products for a project. The platform even claims that half of the users who saw a Pinterest ad later bought the product, and at least 61% of users discovered new brands and products through Pinterest ads.
Targeting on Pinterest
To effectively reach potential buyers with your business and brand, good targeting is key. On Pinterest, you can target based on the following characteristics:
- Interests
- Demographics
- Keywords
- Audiences
With audience targeting, businesses can reach groups of people who have already interacted with content or share similarities with the existing customer base. This involves using a Pinterest Tag. There are four types of sources for audience-based targeting:
- Customer Lists – Upload a CSV file with the email addresses of existing customers.
- Website Visitors – Using retargeting, you can reach website visitors on Pinterest again. There’s a high likelihood in the app that they’ll take actions, such as clicking on one of your pins or saving a product. Pinterest Tag is required to create visitor audiences.
- Pinterest Engagers – This feature allows you to target people who have previously interacted with your pins. Interactions include “Pinning,” close-ups, comments, link clicks, and scrolling through Carousel Pin cards.
- ActAlike Audiences – This feature lets you reach people who resemble an existing audience. Using a source audience, you can target users in the desired country and select a percentage of the target size.
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Advertising on Pinterest – Campaigns, Ads, Placements
If you want to run ads on Pinterest, start by creating a campaign. Similar to Facebook, each Pinterest campaign consists of three levels: Ads, Ad Groups, and Campaign. A campaign includes at least one ad group, which in turn contains multiple ads.
Campaign Goal
Which campaign goal is the right one? It also depends on your business objective. The important campaign goals on Pinterest are:
- Brand Awareness – Let users discover your brand, products, or other services.
- Video Views – Optimize the quality of views, average watch time, and completion rate among users who are most likely to watch your video.
- Brand Preference – Increase the number of clicks on your ad.
- Conversions – Encourage users to take specific actions on your website, such as “Checkout,” “Sign Up,” or “Add to Cart.”
- Shopping Catalogs – Help users discover your products or services while browsing Pinterest for inspiration.
Brand presence and brand awareness goals are particularly effective on Pinterest because users are searching for inspiration and ideas within the app. Calls to action for classic conversions typically don’t work as well. Pinterest ads are therefore more suitable for the upper funnel.
For the ad group, you need to define the budget, timeframe, target audience, and bids for the ads within the group. Similar to Facebook Ads, you should create multiple ad groups to test how differently users respond to your ads (A/B testing). On Pinterest, it’s especially important that your pins catch attention at first glance, whether for an idea or a product — so be creative and choose your images carefully. You can create multiple pins for a product with different images and use testing to identify the best one.
Once your ad pins are live, you’ll pay for the advertising. Your ad will then appear in the home feed of your target audience and relevant searches, potentially generating fans, followers, and customers.
Ad Formats
These are the following ad formats and specifications available for Pinterest Ads:
In addition to these classic formats, there are also Collection Pins and Idea Pins. Collection Pins allow you to link a main image or video with multiple product images that lead directly to a purchase. They are ideal for promoting entire collections or a series of related products. Idea Pins, on the other hand, are a multimedia story format that can consist of up to 20 pages and are perfect for tutorials, guides, and inspiring stories to deepen brand engagement.
Placement
Here’s where you can place your ads on Pinterest:
Advertising on Pinterest – How you get started
- Verification – First, you should link and verify your website with Pinterest.
- Rich Pins – Set up Rich Pins to provide users with more information. (With Rich Pins, you verify your pins, and extra information like meta descriptions and blog post titles are automatically added.)
- Boards – We recommend creating at least 5-10 boards, filled with 10-15 pins each, and having an attractive board design.
- Social SEO – Focus on SEO-optimized text in profile, board, and pin descriptions. This will help you appear in both Google and Pinterest search results.
- Audience Insights – Know your audience and address them in your profile, board, and pin descriptions.
- Optimize Website for Pinterest – Use images on your website that stand out on Pinterest and appeal to your target audience.
- Install Tag – Remember to install the Pinterest tag to track all important events and optimize them.
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Pinterest Advertising – Conclusion
Pinterest grows by about 30% annually and is already the third-largest social media platform in the USA. Its large target audience is diverse in terms of age and has a medium to high income, offering an excellent opportunity for many businesses. Users on the platform are looking for inspiration and ways to tackle their projects and problems. This makes them particularly receptive to products that can help them achieve their goals. However, competition on Pinterest is still relatively low, and the prices are much lower than on other social media platforms. Therefore, Pinterest advertising is worthwhile for many businesses — as long as it’s done right.
