Pinterest isn’t just a “scrapbook” anymore; it’s one of the most intent-driven ad platforms. Users come here to plan, save and ultimately, purchase, which is why Pinterest Ads have quietly become a go-to channel for brands looking for high-quality traffic and highly converting audiences.

Whether you’re thinking of trialling Pinterest for the first time or levelling up your strategy, this guide will help you with every step of creating campaigns that not only look good but perform.

Why Pinterest Ads Deserve Your Attention

Unlike social feeds where users often doom scroll passively, Pinterest users actively search for inspiration across categories like home décor, fashion, beauty, travel, food and lifestyle. More like a search engine than a social media platform.

This intent means higher-quality clicks, longer dwell time and stronger conversion potential.

Pinterest Ads connect directly with this behaviour, allowing brands to show up at the exact moment user are planning a purchase.

What Pinterest Ads Manager Actually Is

Pinterest Ads Manager is the central hub where marketers can create campaigns, manage budgets, track performance and analyse results. If you’re familiar with Meta or Google Ads, expect a much more simpler interface and more visual, which is very on-brand for Pinterest.

Key Sections You’ll Use

• Campaign dashboard: High-level performance overview.
• Ad groups: where you set audiences and placements
• Pins: these are the creatives
• Analytics: trends, metrics, conversions
• Audiences: saved segments, actalikes, and engagement audiences.

How Pinterest Ads Work

Like most social media & search ad platforms, Pinterest uses keywords, interests & demographics and user behaviour signals (such as saves, boards and searches).

Your ads will appear in places like the home feed, search results, related pins and the Today tab. All these placements combined make Pinterest Ads uniquely strong for discovery and conversion.

Set Up Your Pinterest Account

Before you start running ads, get your groundwork right.

Start by converting your existing account to a business version or creating a business account from scratch. The next step is to claim your website, as this will allow you to unlock analytics, attribution and brand authority across your Pins.

Next, install the Pinterest Insight Tag, much like the Meta & TikTok pixels, which tracks conversions, add-to-carts, checkout events and sign-ups. Users can also enable Enhanced Match, which helps boost accuracy, especially for e-commerce brands.

Choose the right objective for your campaign. Pinterest offers four main objectives depending on what you’re looking to achieve;

• Awareness: This is designed for reach and impressions, perfect for product launches or big seasonal purchases.
• Consideration: Focuses on clicks and traffic. This is great for driving people to specific landing pages or blog content.
• Conversions: Optimises for actions like checkout, signup, or form submissions. Best for accounts with a lot of data already built up from past campaigns.
• Shopping: Utilises your product catalogue to run dynamic shopping ads. Ideal for e-commerce brands with lots of SKUs.

Build Your Campaign (Step-by-Step)

Now that your planning is complete, it’s time to execute it! This is a step-by-step of how to create your campaign in Pinterest Ads Manager.

Step 1 – Campaign Level

Firstly, select your Objective, set a daily or lifetime budget (daily sometimes gives greater control). Next, turn on pacing controls (if this is relevant) and give your campaign a name (e.g., “Spring Collection – Traffic – UK”).

Step 2 – Ad Group Level

In this section, you will select who views your ads and set the areas to target.

Audience options include:

• Keywords
• Interests
• Demographics
• Actalike audiences
• Engagement audiences
• Website visitors
• Shopping retargeting

Placement

There are two options here: Browse and Search. Browse relates to the home feed and related pins; this allows for broader discovery. Search is keyword-triggered, often meaning higher intent.

Bidding

Again, there are two options, Automatic & Custom. Automatic is the default and recommended for beginners using Pinterest Ads. Custom bids allow for more control but need to be monitored more often.

Once this is done, schedule your ad to start & end on specific dates or run continuously.

Step 3 – Ad Pin Creation

Now it’s time to select your Pins (creative), and consider which ones your audience will respond to.

Here you can set:

• An image or video
• Title (recommend 40 characters max)
• Description (up to 500 characters)
• Destination URL
• Tags (Pinterest’s naming for keywords in essence)

Creative Guidelines

Each social media platform has its own creative guidelines; Pinterest is probably the most unique. Make sure your content follows the below to meet their standards and look appealing to the user.

• Vertical 2:3 ratio performs best.
• Strong text overlay boosts clarity
• Favour lifestyle over pack shots on a white background
• Stick to 3-5 strong keywords per pin

Best Practice for High-Performing Pinterest Ads

As Pinterest is a visual-first platform, great creative matters here more than any other social media platform (arguably).

Stick to using bold imagery, with minimal but clear text. Your product should be the “hero”, meaning it’s instantly distinguishable when the user sees the ad and shows it in real-life scenarios, rather than a studio image (e.g. a sofa in a home, rather than a showroom). This will allow users to envisage it in their lives.

Lastly, test multiple colour palettes, Pinterest is very trend-heavy!

Targeting Best Practice

Use 20-40 keywords max, any more or less, and the targeting will struggle to find your ideal audience. Combine broad interest with keywords to ensure you’re covering all bases and avoid overly narrow targeting.

Once you have more warm data, set up actalike audiences using conversion data.

Budget & Bidding Tips

As a best practice with all social media platforms, allow your campaigns to run for at least 7-14 days without edits. This will allow the system to learn correctly and ensure your budget is properly allocated.

Ensure you start with automatic bidding rather than using manual bidding straight off. This will give you an idea of your ideal CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) and will give you an understanding of how much you are willing to pay for a lead/conversion.

When it comes time to scale, increase budgets gradually (10-20% at a time). This will ensure you don’t burn through your budget and avoid waste.

Measuring Success in Pinterest Ads Manager

When it comes to reporting, these are the key metrics to keep an eye on.

• CTR (Click-Through Rate): Are people engaged?
• CPC (Cost Per Click): Are you paying efficiently?
• Saves: Strong signal of intent
• ATC (Add to Cart): Key mid-funnel metric
• CVR (Conversion Rate): True performance indicator
• ROAS: Your ultimate profitability measure

How to use Pinterest Analytics

Once you know your key metrics, consider the following and adjust your strategy accordingly:

• Which creatives get the most saves?
• What are the top-performing keywords?
• How do your new vs. returning audiences behave?
• Which Pins drive last-click conversions?

Optimise & Scale Your Campaigns

Once your Pinterest campaign has collected enough data, it’s time to optimise. Start by testing creative variations, these could things like experimenting with text overlays, lifestyle versus product-only visuals, different colour palettes, and fresh value proposals to see what resonates with your audiences.

Then refine your targeting by expanding keywords, exploring new interest groups, adding engagement or actalike audiences, and layering in retargeting during key promotional periods.

When you identify a winning setup, scale it carefully by duplicating the ad group with a higher budget or gradually increasing spend on the original (no more than 20% every 48–72 hours), and consider introducing manual bidding for even tighter control.

Mistakes to Avoid

Even experienced Pinterest advertisers fall into a few common traps, like using square images instead of high-performing vertical formats or cramming in too many keywords, which can confuse the algorithm. Others sabotage results by tweaking campaigns too frequently, relying solely on plain product shots, skipping the essential Pinterest Tag, or targeting audiences so narrowly that delivery stalls.

Overall, the biggest mistake to avoid is pulling the plug before the algorithm has time to properly learn and optimise.

Conclusion

Pinterest sits in a sweet spot of discovery meets intent. It’s visual, inspirational, and full of users who are actively planning their next purchase. With the right creative, audience signals, and ongoing optimisation, your campaigns can deliver serious results, often at lower costs than the bigger ad platforms.

If you’re ready to get started, contact us today for a discovery call.