Pinterest is known for it’s inspiration. It’s the loveliest of all the social media sites as you’re not deluged with a never ending stream of pseudo news, it’s the place you go to when you’re planning your life and full of hope and happiness. But Pinterest Advertising has pivoted in recent years, after a decade of pure inspiration it’s a now platform where inspiration leads more directly to action and that’s key for advertisers.
On most platforms, advertisers are simply pushing a product – often with Retail Media trying to divert spend to your brand or grabbing a secondary purchase added into a shoppers basket. It’s the kind of advertising that, whilst often successful, is ultimately a bit too late.
With Pinterest Advertising, you’re grabbing attention right at the start of the shopping journey, before brand even comes into play. Consumers are in the visual, personal and intentional exploratory phase when they’re putting a board together for the mood of the room they’re designing or the look they want for that special event. Get your products in front of them at this stage and when they’re ready to purchase you’ve already blown the competition out of the water as they’re emotionally invested in the look they want. You’re tied into their shopping basket before they’re even ready to start shopping!
To sum up, Pinterest’s role in the advertising ecosystem has fundamentally changed from a top-of-funnel brand awareness proposition to a powerful performance platform that enables advertisers to capture audience intent at every stage of the funnel. Pinterest is a place where ideas don’t just inspire, they convert. For brands, this matters. It signals a broader change in how people discover, decide and shop.
What makes Pinterest Advertising unique
To celebrate a decade of monetisation in the UK, Pinterest have set out 10 considerations that matter now and for the future of advertising:
1. The attention economy is broken. Intent is what drives results.
Most platforms are optimised for passive scrolling. Pinterest isn’t – people come with purpose to plan, to decide, to act. That difference shows up in user behaviour. People scroll ads 150% slower on Pinterest than on other platforms, because they’re actively considering what they see.
For advertisers, that’s the shift: from chasing attention to capturing intent. 90% of Pinterest users say that they find products relevant to them on Pinterest, 70% say they’re more likely to follow through with purchasing something they discovered on the platform, and nearly 6 in 10 users say Pinterest is one of the first services they turn to to shop or browse.
2. Pinterest isn’t organised around content – it’s organised around moments.
From everyday ideas to major life events, Pinterest is where people plan what matters. 8 in 10 users come to the platform to plan at least one meaningful moment each year, and those journeys often begin months in advance. Seasonal searches – from outfit ideas to party planning to travel essentials – build momentum well before the moment arrives.
People on Pinterest are more than twice as likely as non-Pinterest users to invest time and effort into preparing for seasonal moments, giving brands a critical window to influence decisions early.
3. The most valuable moment in marketing happens long before a decision is made.
With 96% of top searches unbranded, Pinterest sits at the earliest stage of the journey, when preferences are still forming. This is where brands can influence not just what people choose, but what they want in the first place.
The industry has spent years trying to measure complex, non-linear journeys with a metric built for a straight line. But the last click measurement is fundamentally flawed for modern discovery.
On Pinterest, last click can capture as little as 5% of the platform’s true impact. The rest – the influence of an idea planted days or weeks earlier – has historically gone unseen. Beauty technology brand Omnilux saw a 7x increase in attributed transactions when using view-based attribution, revealing the scale of conversions Pinterest was already driving.
4. Search is up for grabs – and it’s becoming visual.
The way people search is changing. On Pinterest, discovery starts with images, not keywords – making it easier to explore things that are hard to describe, like style or aesthetic.
Most platforms still think in terms of keywords: You type, they guess. Our users live in images: They see, they tap, they shop. Visual search solves the “I’ll know it when I see it” problem that all of us face when shopping. This isn’t a niche behaviour. Visual search queries grew 44% year on year on Pinterest, pointing to a broader shift in how decisions are made – and how brands need to show up. This is particularly appealing to younger users with 69% of Gen Z saying visual results are more helpful than text or reviews when deciding what to buy.
5. The real barrier to conversion isn’t choice – it’s confidence.
Consumers aren’t short of options. They’re overwhelmed by them. In fact, they are faced with 35,000 decisions a day. The endless choice the internet provides has created a “Fear of Better Options” (FOBO) and leads to a huge issue for businesses: 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned – a number that hasn’t changed in ten years.
This isn’t a checkout problem. It’s a confidence problem. Shoppers aren’t ready to commit. This is where the Pinterest difference becomes powerful: 75% of shoppers say the ability to refine options leads to more confident decisions.
6. Curation eliminates FOBO.
Once options are refined, this enables a fundamentally different behaviour on Pinterest: curation. 60% of shoppers say curation reduces FOBO – it’s a key part of the experience on the platform, and it starts with visual search. From there, people curate ideas into Boards, 15 billion to date. As they build Boards, they are essentially creating visual shopping carts, and products saved are twice as likely to be purchased. This behaviour is what makes Pinterest different. People aren’t just browsing – they’re actively shaping decisions.
7. AI is only valuable if it understands taste.
To turn intent into action, AI needs to understand not just what people search, but what they like. Pinterest’s AI-powered Taste Graph doesn’t just process keywords – it understands preference and taste. Powered by over 80 billion monthly signals, it maps how people search, save and engage to deliver deeply personalised recommendations. It’s why so many say “Pinterest just gets me”. For advertisers, that translates into measurable performance, with solutions that are powered by AI, like Pinterest Performance+ delivering a 24% higher conversion lift for retailers.
8. The lower funnel is where creative matters most.
Retailers tend to invest heavily in upper-and-mid-funnel storytelling: lifestyle shoots, brand worlds and carefully crafted narratives designed to build desire. But when it comes to shopping ads, many brands default to pulling products straight from the feed – packshot, price, minimal context. Creative thinking drops away just as shoppers are deciding.
But that gap matters. Without well-designed templates, lower funnel ads can lose the brand cues and context that made people care in the first place. The opportunity is to put templates at the centre of your lower funnel strategy on Pinterest, using Pinterest tools or partner solutions like Smartly, so template systems flow directly into shopping ad formats.
In the UK, DFS used Pinterest’s partnership with Smartly to generate over 800 tailored ads and drive a 114% increase in ROAS. Done well, templates carry visual cues, tone and value propositions into shopping ads, so products feel like a natural continuation of the experience.
9. Pinterest is making it easier than ever for brands to turn intent into action.
Pinterest is continuing to evolve to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to show up at the right moment. New tools like Promote a Pin are simplifying access to advertising, enabling brands and creators to quickly and easily turn organic content into performance campaigns. At the same time, new innovations like Pinterest Assistant are helping people discover and act on ideas more intuitively, bringing us closer to a future where visual search becomes fully personalised and conversational.
10. Positivity is a commercial advantage, not just a brand value.
Pinterest is deliberately designed to be additive and not addictive making it a positive environment. Pinterest has never accepted political advertising, has taken early action on health and climate misinformation, and continues to build products that help people see themselves reflected, from inclusive search experiences to protections for younger users.
This is more than a nice to have for brands, this mindset has a direct impact on performance. Research from MAGNA shows that the same ad can generate a 24% increase in sales when shown in a positive, viewable environment. On Pinterest, advertisers aren’t just buying impressions – they’re buying into a mindset: one that is open, optimistic and ready to act.
