How to Advertise on Pinterest

Advertising on Pinterest can be a very effective way to increase your brand’s internet awareness. It can also boost your engagement, traffic, and sales. You can implement Pinterest advertising in any aspect of your advertising campaign, whether your intent is to generate awareness or make sales. This is because Pinterest is a place where users can search for anything from lifestyle products to fashion and beauty, even parenting and cooking.

What Is Pinterest?

Pinterest is like the perfect mix of a search engine and a social media platform. It allows for both word and photo search so users can save things they find (pins) to the different topics they have created on their account (boards).

With billions of Pin options available on Pinterest, it allows users to find many pins to spark inspiration. When they discover Pins they love, users can save them to their boards. Pinterest allows users to organize their ideas in virtual “vision boards.”

advertise on pinterest

Purpose of Pinterest

As mentioned previously, people use Pinterest to shop and plan, so they are already looking for solutions and products that will help them. Pinterest’s goal is to “connect everyone in the world through the things they find interesting.” Pinterest is a go to for people who are looking to create something, laugh, try a new recipe, or learn a new game. Also, it does have many similar functions to other social media platforms. You can follow friends, like and comment on posts, and share pins with people via a chat feature.

Pinterest’s Traffic

Pinterest generated $300 million in revenue in 2016 and has continued to grow each year. In the first four months of 2021, Pinterest had 478 million active users each month. In June of 2021, just about 1.1 billion visits were measured to Pinterest.com. This makes it one of the most-visited websites online. 

Advertising on Pinterest

Pinterest Ads are also called Promoted Pins. Pinterest uses algorithms to determine users’ interests, past activity, and actions on websites to be able to show each user the Promoted Pins that will interest them the most and entice clicks. This incredible combination of a search engine and social media makes Pinterest a very powerful advertising tool. It will help you understand your audience. For example, Pinterest can let you see trends before they happen. 

Depending on the type of business, advertising on Pinterest can offer many benefits to grow online. Even companies who think Pinterest demography might not be suited for them may find out that under the large user base that Pinterest reaches, you can find a profitable target audience to maximize your profits online.

pinterest ad examples

Pinterest Ad Benefits

  • Gain brand awareness
  • Increase your traffic
  • Pinterest search (both by words and visuals)
  • Pinterest benefits content marketing
  • Low cost for Pinterest Ads 
  • Pinterest’s ad targeting algorithms
  • Pinterest Ad’s internal strategy for marketing

Guidelines

All of these guidelines came from Pinterest’s Ad website. The text below each explains how to make sure you abide by each one so you can maintain a great advertising relationship with Pinterest.

  • Be Authentic with Pinterest Users. Authenticity means being truthful and honest about the product or service you’re promoting. It also means being transparent with people about what they should expect when they interact with your products or services.
  • Be Thoughtful With Your Editorial. To keep ads inspiring and actionable, Pinterest sets high standards for the editorial quality of promoted content.
  • Be Clear About the Destination. Pinterest cares about the ad experience from start to finish—including the URL your ad links to. They want to make sure users find what they’re looking for when they click through.
  • Be Responsible With Your Content. Pinterest doesn’t allow certain categories of ads because they can be disruptive or problematic, regardless of context.

Cost

You can expect to pay between $2.00 to $5.00 per thousand impressions (CPM) if you’re trying to build brand awareness. If your objective is to boost engagement, ads will cost $0.10 to $1.50 per engagement. These types of ads run on a cost-per-engagement (CPE) model. This means that you pay only when someone engages with your ad. If your objective is to drive web traffic, ads will cost $0.10 to $1.50 per engagement as well.

advertising on pinterest

What Makes a Great Pinterest Ad?

Visually Appealing Ad

The human brain responds automatically to assets that are beautiful or visually appealing, so this is important to consider when implementing your marketing campaigns. The best way to engage your audience right from the start is to make your brand visible. Here are some best practices to keep in mind for your visuals in Pinterest ads.

For Pins:

  1. Pins on Pinterest are very interactive. The link your pin takes users to should make sense.
  2. Pick eye-catching yet high-quality, vertical images.
  3. Make your brand the focal point. Choose obvious over cheeky.   
  4. Provide context about your product through the description. Visualize the value you’re providing.
  5. Include your logo in a subtle way by placing it on the lower right corner of the image.
  6. Add text overlay to tell a better story (and encourage users to click on the Pin Ad). 

For Videos:

  1. Start strong and make your content actionable. Make people want to try something new.
  2. Tailor the length based on your goals. (Aim for 6-15 seconds for promoted videos.)
  3. Don’t rely on audio. Most people browse through their feeds with the sound off, so captions are your friend.
  4. Pick a strong cover image to easily catch your target audience’s attention.
  5. Optimize your Pin copy by creating clear titles, descriptions, and hashtags.

pinterest ads

Keeping Things Concise is Key

Writing clearly and concisely means choosing your words deliberately and precisely, constructing your sentences carefully to eliminate deadwood, and using grammar properly. By writing clearly and concisely, you will get straight to your point in a way your audience can easily comprehend.

Know Your Intended Audience

The main audience on Pinterest includes affluent young women of adult age who typically make more than $75,000 a year. In addition, 10 percent of the social platform’s users make more than $125,000 per year. Active pinners were also noted to have 9% higher incomes than others.

Pinterest has been working on expanding to male interests, but the best way to see if your audience is available is by using the Pinterest for Business platform and setting up an ad to build an audience.

Most of the Pinners on the platform are under 40 years of age. About 33% of users are over 40 years old. With all that said, you can still target just about any demographic or interest on Pinterest’s advertising platform. Their targeting is almost as sophisticated as Facebook – you have the capability of targeting based on location, gender, age, search terms, and more. There’s a lot of flexibility when it comes to the Pinterest Ads platform.

Keyword Targeting on Pinterest

Keyword targeting lets you reach people as they search for a specific idea on Pinterest. To use keyword targeting, select keywords related to the ad you’re promoting. For example, if you’re promoting living room furniture, try targeting people searching for “living room decor” or “home decor ideas.” For more precise control over which searches your ad appears or doesn’t appear in, use keyword match types.

pinterest advertising

Pinterest’s Ad Review Process

Once you launch your campaign, Pinterest reviews it to make sure it follows its Advertising guidelines. The campaign review process can take up to 24 hours. 

If your campaign targeting goes against Pinterest’s advertising guidelines, they’ll send you a notification in Ads Manager letting you know what needs to change so that your ad can be reviewed again for approval. Once approved, they will start distributing your ad.

Pinterest Advertising

Pinterest Ads offer marketers the chance to earn awareness and consideration from Pinterest’s 250 million users early in their consumer journeys. And connecting early works: 98% of Pinners say they’ve tried new things they found on Pinterest, versus 71% on other social media platforms.

FAQ:

  • What are the benefits of choosing Pinterest for your advertising over other social media platforms?
  • How much does it cost to advertise on Pinterest?
  • What demographic is the best to target through a Pinterest ad?
  • How long does it take for Pinterest to review and approve my ad?
  • How does Pinterest determine who sees my Ad?

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