Pinterest is a great place to advertise lifestyle, clothing, food-related brands. Any product that can be advertised using beautiful pictures and videos can find great results via Pinterest ads. Brands like Cheetos, Absolut Vodka, and some of the biggest names in the fashion industry have had success tales of advertising on Pinterest.  Most of the traffic on Pinterest is through mobile devices. Because of that, it is also a great place to advertise apps and get more app downloads.

If you’re planning on advertising on Pinterest, this article will provide you with a quick rundown of all the different kinds of ad formats available. You’ll also learn some great tips on getting the most out of your Pinterest Ad campaigns.

And if you’re still scratching your heads and wondering if Pinterest is really the platform for your business or not, talk to the digital marketing experts here at Vividreal. Different types of products work better on specific social media platforms. We would love to help you out.

Types of Pinterest Ads

Let’s talk about the different kinds of ads you can find on Pinterest.

Promoted Pins

The most basic type of ad on Pinterest is called Promoted Pins. These are just like every other Pin. They behave the same way, except for the fact that these have a wider reach. They can appear on your feed and in your search results. If someone shares your promoted Pin, it gets shared as a normal Pin. This means that when people share your post, you get more reach for free!

Promoted pins are great for brand awareness.

Promoted carousel

Similar to Facebook carousels, these are 2-5 images that people can scroll through. They also appear on your feed and in your search results. Each image can have a different title, description, and different landing pages. This type of ad is great if you want to advertise multiple products, with each product leading people to a different product page. The supported file types are the same as the promoted Pins.

Promoted Video Pins

These are the same as promoted Pins except this is for a video ad. They can appear on someone’s feed as well as their search results.

Since video Pins start playing automatically, and since the majority of viewers browse Pinterest on mute, make sure that audio isn’t necessary to catch someone’s attention. You can work around this by shifting focus onto the visuals, or by providing captions if there’s dialogue. 

Video pins are of 2 types. The standard ones that are as wide as every other Pin, and the full-width video Pins that take up more space on the screen. The objective of this type of ad could be anything from creating brand awareness or to drive people to a website. Here’s some information about the technical aspects of video Pins:

Promoted App pins

Like Google’s App Install ads, you can advertise your apps on Pinterest too. Since around 80 percent of Pinterest users are from mobile devices, it is a great place to advertise your app. This type of ad looks like a promoted Pin, except it will be linked to the Play Store or iTunes. There will also be an “Install” button prompting users to take action.

Buyable Pins 

Ever noticed those posts on Instagram that feature products which when clicked on, takes you to a different page? You can do that on Pinterest as well. This type of ad is great for images that have multiple products in them. Viewers can learn more about the products and even buy them from these Pins.

Story pins

This feature isn’t available to everyone yet. These Pins appear on people’s home feed with a cover image and open it to see “stories” that can include multiple images, videos and text. Story Pins can have a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 20 pages. 

Tips: what works best?

Use high resolution, vertical images that look great on mobile devices. Pinterest is a visual platform so make sure your Pins look great!

Prioritize the first 30-60 characters of your description. Write copies that pique interest. 

If you’re planning on a video ad, then remember that the first few seconds of the video are the most important. How-tos and tutorials are pretty popular on Pinterest. If you’re trying to advertise a clothing brand, maybe post a tutorial on how to get the perfect look for summer using your products. This has another bonus effect. Pins that show people interacting with and using your products generally have more success. 

Pinterest allows you to display more information on your Pins. These Pins are called Rich Pins and they perform really well when used in ad campaigns. You can even add details like prices of products directly on your Pins. 

How to start advertising on Pinterest?

Here’s a quick guide that can help you start advertising on Pinterest. It is a fairly simple process if you’ve advertised on other platforms like Facebook/Google Ads. 

Create or switch to a business account

You’ll either need to create a business account on Pinterest or change your existing account to a business account.

Pinterest tag

The next thing you’ll need to do is to install the Pinterest tag. This allows you to track and monitor the actions taken by someone after they’ve clicked on your ad.

This usually involves getting into the HTML of your website, so if you need help with it, feel free to reach out to us.

Campaign goal, types of goals

You’ll then need to decide on a campaign goal. This decision will impact the format of your ads and how you bid in the ad auction.

You can choose between building brand awareness, increasing web traffic, getting more video views or getting more app installs.

Campaign budget

Decide on your daily and lifetime spend limit. You’ll get more ways to control this in the pacing section mentioned below.

Ad group

Create an ad group for your ads. Each ad group can have a separate budget and targeting. Ad groups help you manage many goals in a single campaign.

Target audience

In this step, you can choose the people you want your ads shown too. If you’ve got a particular audience in mind you can customise details like age group, gender, location and more.

Placement (browse and search)

There are two different types of placement available on Pinterest: browse and search. Browse puts your ad on someone’s feed. This is great when you want to target ads using interest. The other option puts your ads on a search result. This works well when your ads are keyword targeted. If possible, try to get your ads on both browse and search.

Interests and keywords

You can fine-tune your targeting in this step. Choose interests that are related to your brand. This allows Pinterest to show your ads to people who engage with Pins that come under the interests you’ve selected. 

Choosing the right keywords ensures that your ad is shown in the search result when people search for queries related to your brand. You even have the option to choose negative keywords: phrases that you don’t want to be associated with your brand.

Set up budget

In this step, you can set up the daily spend limit and the lifetime spend limit of your ads. But first, choose a start and end date for your ad campaign. These details cannot be edited later so plan well!

You will now be able to optimise your campaign by adjusting bid and pacing. In Pinterest ads, you have 2 different kinds of pacing, standard and accelerated. Standard is the usual type of ad we’re all used to that takes its own time to complete the budget throughout its duration. Accelerated pacing is for high impact ads that are supposed to get you results fast! These may drain your budget quickly tho. You can monitor your ads and tweak configurations in the Analytics section of the Pinterest Ads Manager to get the most out of them.

So there you have it, a quick guide on Pinterest Ads. Statistically, Pinterest users are more likely to spend money on something they think has value. This makes it a great place to get more sales and app installs. If you can advertise your brand with good looking images and videos, then go all out! Pinterest is the right place for you. 

If you’re still doubtful and are not ready to take that jump yet, talk to our digital marketing team and let’s discuss the best ways to market your brand.