With 425 million active users, it’s no surprise that Pinterest is a powerful marketing tool. People on the platform are actively looking for inspiration, ideas and how-tos, putting them in the mindset to take action and be inspired.
Each year, Pinterest hosts Pinterest Presents—an annual advertising summit designed to share big news and updates directly from the company’s leaders. In September, Pinterest shared some of its most impressive product previews and launches, from new ad formats to refined tools for Pin creation and management. They also shared an inside look at audiences driving the most growth for the platform, reporting (to nobody’s surprise) that Gen Z is the fastest-growing audience and actively coming back each day.
Whether you’re just getting started with advertising on Pinterest or looking for innovations to fine-tune your marketing campaigns, we’ve got everything you need to know to help your brand get the most out of advertising on Pinterest in 2024.
Take Up Space with Premiere Spotlight
Driving maximum awareness for your brand’s top moments requires a high-impact message. In June 2023, Pinterest announced Premiere Spotlight—an exclusive video ad placement on the search page that takes up around half of a mobile screen. Now, Premiere Spotlight is also available within the Pinterest home feed, right where Pinners shop for products, discover brands and get inspired.
Pinterest hasn’t announced ad pricing for Premiere Spotlight, but we can assume this feature will be a premium offering—best suited for larger brands. However, it does hint at Pinterest’s evolving video ad offerings, giving brands with smaller budgets an idea of how they could utilize video assets in other ad formats.
New Ad Formats
A full-funnel advertising strategy requires advertising capabilities that stand out against the noise. Enter Showcase and Quiz ads, two new ad formats designed to capture attention and encourage action.
Showcase Ads
With Showcase ads, advertisers can display multiple Pins in one unit and tag each with a different link. Within every Pin on a Showcase ad, you can include three clickable features that directly link to your site, giving you the power to get granular with website traffic. Like other Pinterest ad formats, Pinners can Pin the individual cards to their Boards.
Quiz Ads
Quiz ads provide personalized results for Pinners, showcasing services or products from your brand that fit their preferences best. Each ad can include two or three quiz questions, with customized recommendations for each quiz result. Pinners can even save their quiz results as a pin to their favorite boards to return to later. Moving Pinners down the funnel from initial discovery to decision can be accomplished with just a few clicks, providing quiz takers with a personalized product recommendation from your brand.
Streamlined Shopping Experiences
While the final act of buying is relatively simple, Pinterest understands there’s an entire journey before a transaction occurs. That’s why they’ve introduced mobile deep links and direct links, new tools advertisers can use to help Pinners make purchase decisions and check out more efficiently.
Mobile Deep Links
Take Pinners from your Pinterest ads to a product page within your mobile app with mobile deep links. By reducing the friction from product discovery to purchase, mobile deep links make shopping on Pinterest a breeze. Plus, Pinners can utilize their shipping or payment info already stored in your app. This shopping experience is also happening across other social platforms and is only growing in popularity among consumers.
Direct Links
Turn Pinners into active shoppers of your brand with direct links. Since Pinterest’s advertising summit in September, they’ve rolled out direct links for awareness and conversion campaigns across image and video formats. Brands are seeing success, too. According to Pinterest, brands that have incorporated direct links into their consideration campaigns have seen an average of 96% more clicks to the site.
In the example above, clicking the image of these slingback pumps immediately directs you to the product page on the Charles & Keith website. For ads using direct links, there’s just one click, and it goes directly to the advertiser’s site. From there, Pinners can quickly select their size and head to check out. This streamlined customer journey supports your lower funnel goals at a lower cost compared to other Pinterest ads.
Redefined E-Commerce Integrations
While Pinterest already offers a house of integration capabilities for retailers, Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Adobe Commerce will also soon join the mix. Now that product updates are automatically updated on Pinterest, uploading product catalogs is simple for retailers big and small.
Creative Studio
Pinterest knows that lifestyle ads drive better conversions than basic product images, especially when ads are served on a broad scale. The same AI that’s powering Pinterest’s user-focused products, like Collages, is also powering visualization tools created specifically for advertisers. Creative Studio helps brands create high-quality Pins that grab attention and are more easily shoppable—without the need for resource-heavy photoshoots. Advertisers can easily create unique, tailored product images in seconds utilizing text prompts. While Creative Studio isn’t immediately available for advertisers, you can contact your Pinterest team to let them know you’re interested.
With all these new tools, brands can deliver customized content to highly engaged audiences at every stage of the customer journey. But advertising on Pinterest is just one component of a robust digital marketing strategy. Learn more about building an authentic brand voice across all channels and touchpoints here.
