Did you know that the average US adult spends upwards of 40% of their waking hours online? That is a lot of time to spend behind a screen. Of these hours, most of this traffic comes from a mix of completing tasks for work and surfing various social media channels — including Pinterest.
According to Pinterest’s recent Global Analysis report, 478 million people from around the world come to Pinterest each month. In the United States, there are 96 million monthly users on Pinterest. More than half of these users are women, but in recent years, the number of men who use Pinterest has increased. In 2023, 1 in 4 men in the US are on the platform.
Pinterest is unique in that it combines the social aspect of social media with a search engine function that lets people search for inspiration and ideas. This is part of what makes Pinterest such a great advertising platform for brands as well – Pinterest users want and expect to discover new brands, projects, and products.
With the right strategy in place, Pinterest can be an incredible platform for advertising. Get ready to learn and let’s dive into everything you need to know about advertising on Pinterest!
Benefits of Advertising on Pinterest
There are many benefits to advertising on Pinterest! Let’s look at a few:
1. Pinterest = Positive Environment
As a search engine for inspiration, Pinterest users, or pinners, use the platform for deeply personal reasons and they have a positive mindset while doing so. Often referred to as the “positive corner of the Internet,” Pinterest is one of the only platforms that has not been created for social validation and to digest politics or news. It even goes so far as to reduce and ban misinformation, does not allow political advertising, and even has banned sensitive content such as weight loss ads. This is great news for advertisers — it means that people who see your ad on Pinterest are more likely to have a positive reaction to it.
2. Users are Spending Money
Most of the people who use Pinterest are also in a mindset to shop and are more likely to appreciate the ads being shown to them. Ads that are run on Pinterest are also “less disruptive,” meaning they tend to blend in with the rest of the pins that are included on the home feed. Can you spot the ads on this Pinterest home screen?
By using this approach, pinners are more likely to not only engage with the ad, but also complete a purchase.
On average, Pinterest ads generate a 2 times higher return on ad spend (ROAS) for retail brands compared to social media. Ads on Pinterest are also 2.3 times more efficient in cost per conversion than ads on other social media platforms. Those are some pretty incredible stats.
Shopping on Pinterest also drives 10 times higher branded searches off the platform than any other social channel. This is because Pinterest helps users make up their mind about the item(s) that they want to purchase.
3. People Use Pinterest to Plan For The Future
Many people use Pinterest’s board-building aspect to plan out aspects of their future. By being able to separate inspiration into groups, or boards, that they can name, users often use Pinterest for home renovation inspiration, wedding planning, vacation and travel ideas, motivation toward reaching a certain goal, and more. This creates a deeper connection to the real world than other social media channels typically can, as people use Pinterest as an escape from the online world and use the app to idealize their own life..
Buying starts early and lasts longer on Pinterest than any other channel. This is because people plan ahead! For example, with the holiday season, people start planning their gifts and holiday parties as early as August and it will wind down at the end of December.
With this being said, it’s important to run your campaigns on Pinterest earlier and longer than other channels.
Setting Up Your Campaigns Correctly
It's important that you understand the way to set up campaigns properly with Pinterest. If not, money can be wasted and your goal(s) will not be reached. Let’s talk about campaign objectives and the targeting details.
Pinterest has five primary objectives to choose from on the campaign level:
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Build brand awareness: Help people discover your brand, products, and other services.
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Video views: Promote videos to help people discover your brand or drive actions.
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Drive Consideration: Get more people to click on your ad via Pinterest.
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Get Conversions: Drive people to take actions on your website.
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Catalog Sales: Promote your product inventory with shopping ads.
When choosing an objective for your campaign , make sure that the objective lines up with the goal that you’re trying to achieve. On the campaign level, you will be naming your campaign, choosing the budget, and scheduling how long the campaign will run.
Next comes the ad set level. This is where you will set up all of your targeting details in order to reach your target audience. When setting up the information for your target audience, you have three options to choose from:
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Reconnect with Users: This option is used for retargeting people who have already interacted with your brand on Pinterest.
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Find New Customers: This option is used to target prospective customers who have not interacted with your brand yet.
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Choose Your Own: This last option is to make targeting selections without guidance. This option is recommended for experienced advertisers only.
Once you choose a target audience option, you will move on to selecting the interests and keywords, demographics, and placement and tracking.
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Demographics: This section is where you will select the people you want to target based on specific demographics such as age, location, gender, etc.
Once your targeting is all set up, it is now time to confirm your budget and schedule (this is set up on the campaign level) and look into optimization and delivery. This will determine what you would like your optimization and bidding to look like. Keep in mind that this information may vary depending on the objective that you choose.
Here comes the fun part - selecting ads for your campaign!
When selecting ads for your campaign, it’s important to note that all of your ads need to become pins first. This will make the process of choosing ads easier, instead of creating your pins right then and there. With this being said, there are a ton of different types of ads that you can create for your campaign:
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Idea Pins: A combo of short video segments or a series of various graphics to draw Pinners in with immersive, educational content
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Try-On Product Pins: A “virtual fitting room” in which you can see how the product looks using your phone’s camera
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Collection Ads: A collection of ads that features either one video feature or a feature image and three supporting images
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Carousel Ads: A group of images that users can swipe through
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Shopping Ads: A collection of pins that are pulled from your product catalog
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Promoted Pins: A pin that is considered “boosted” and is run as an ad
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Rich Pins: These are pins that allow you to include more detailed information than regular pins and includes information such as price, stock availability, etc.
On this ad level, you will also give each ad a name, destination URL, and, if applicable, ad tracking URLs from third-party tracking sites. Unless your business has a significant budget for advertising on Pinterest, you should run the same type of ads within each campaign.
Don’t Forget to Utilize Pinterest’s Resources!
Pinterest offers various resources for businesses to utilize in order to help your campaigns flourish. Here are some of our favorites:
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Pinterest Predicts: See emerging trends for the upcoming year so you can include some of the trends that are relevant to your business into your content plan
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Creative Best Practices: Includes some of the best practices to follow when creating ads for Pinterest
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Pinterest Blog Page: Informs businesses about the various updates that are taking place on Pinterest.
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Pinterest Academy: Pinterest’s e-learning platform, which will assist you in developing your advertising skills
Get help from ads experts.
Setting up social media ads on any platform can be challenging, but we're here to help! At Speak, we have a team of subject matter experts to help you and your organization with all things social media such as organic social media, content creation, website management, SEO, and more! Give us a shout to see how we can help you achieve your digital marketing goals.
Get in touch.