Advertise on Pinterest: A guide for marketers & media buyers

While social media platforms can often feel enraging, distracting, or dividing; Pinterest commits to being an oasis of self-expression, discovery, and inspiration.

Pinterest is one of the first places we look for fashion ideas, new recipes, design trends, or ways to decorate for a kid's birthday party.

But beyond flipping through boards for inspo, it's a highly underrated advertising platform for brands looking to grow.

With 570 million monthly active users globally and 98 million in the U.S. [as of May 2025], Pinterest is the second fastest-growing social media platform after Instagram.

What's new in Pinterest advertising for 2025?

A doom spending gold rush

With tariffs forthcoming and portending major price hikes, marketers are in a particularly tough spot, tasked with making difficult decisions about how to keep sales up while consumer sentiment is down.

Fortune reports that many Americans are “doom spending”, or stockpiling essentials like food, personal care items, and home goods before prices go up. This behavioral trend provides a ripe opportunity for brands to marry performance marketing now (to get in on the doom spending spree) with brand equity building (to keep customers returning when they’re in a better spot down the road).

Fortunately, some media channels (like Pinterest) are proactively preparing for shaky waters by gathering data and sprucing up their offerings to help advertisers do more with less.

AI revamps ad creative, targeting, & tracking

Pinterest’s AI-powered Performance+ campaign builder ingests conversion signals, audience signals, creative assets, and objectives to automate ad placements and elevate brand affinity, traffic, and sales on the backend.

Performance+ bundles creative assistance with target ROAS bidding together for the strongest lower-funnel performance yet.

In 2024, Pinterest expanded its Clean Rooms Partnership with LiveRamp, which allows marketers to safely use first-party data for targeted ads without needing to re-share that information with the social platform.

LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution can now be connected with Pinterest’s API for Conversions. This new solution builds on existing capabilities by creating addressable audiences that can be reached at scale and measured on any channel. This integration makes Pinterest the first platform to invest in both measurement solutions for their advertisers.

Finally, Pinterest’s newest offering is a set of visual search features that let users interact with image Pins to quickly find and shop all the items in a picture.

FAQs

Why should I advertise on Pinterest?

Positivity sells. Pinterest CEO Bill Ready has called out social media as "the new big tobacco," accusing their (faster growing) competitors of utilizing AI in a destructive way, leaving the world "more distracted, more depressed, and more divided."

It's an interesting approach, given Pinterest is a social platform itself, but it speaks to the company's dedication to creating a different kind of experience from its rivals -- one that is built around self-expression and discovery.

In a 2023 campaign, Pinterest championed the concept "Don't Don't Yourself" to encourage people to break out of their existing habits and routines.

This shift to positivity and optimism presents an excellent opportunity for brand safety, something declining in other blue-chip social platforms.

Positively viewed platforms can be up to 94% more impactful in driving purchase intent compared to platforms viewed as non-positive.

How do I advertise on Pinterest?

The media buying process on Pinterest is similar to other digital advertising platforms:

1. Set up a Business Profile for free

2. Establish a campaign objective using Pinterest Ads Manager, like brand awareness, driving web traffic, or converting sales.

3. Define your target audience by demographics, psychographics, location, interest, etc.

4. Creative assets: Choose which Pins to use in your ads, or use the Pin builder to create new ones

5. Set your budget & bidding: Determine your daily or lifetime campaign budget. Then set your bids, which determines how much you pay per click or impression.

6. Create ad groups: Multiple ad groups can target different segments of your audience or display different messaging, each with their own campaign objective, targeting, and budget.

7. Analyze and optimize: Pinterest analytics provides rich insights into campaign performance. Optimize as you go by adjusting your bids, audience, or budget. But don't switch things up too often! Campaigns need sufficient time to gather significant data.

How much does it cost to advertise on Pinterest?

The cost depends on a number of factors, like:

• bidding strategy (manual or automated)

• competitiveness of keywords and industry

• targeting criteria (broad vs. niche)

• ad format

• campaign goals

But a typical click-through cost (CPC) ranges from $0.10 to $1.50 per click; while cost per conversion usually ranges from $0.00 to $2.00.

A three-year Nielsen study of US and UK food, health/beauty, and home decor campaigns found that Pinterest delivered a 32% higher ROAS than other digital platforms.

As advertisers, we find Pinterest's position in the market very compelling. The positive atmosphere, the brand safety, the strong campaign performance, and constantly evolving media buying innovations are a real boon to our clients. To find out what else we’re hearing from Pinterest in agency-exclusive meetings, contact one of our paid social media experts here.

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