Pinterest ads: how to run a first campaign for a small shop

What Pinterest ads are and where they show

Pinterest ads are Pinterest's paid advertising: regular Pins that you pay to be placed where people are most likely to see them. Pinterest places them in the home feed, category feeds, and relevant search results.

Pinterest says you need a business account to create ads. The business account is free and gives you analytics on your Pins and the ability to run ads. You run ads in Ads Manager at ads.pinterest.com.

Before you promote Pins, Pinterest's ads overview says they must meet these requirements:

• Saved to your own business profile.
• Saved to public boards.
• Have destination URLs, with no link shorteners in the destination URL or description.
• Are not third party videos or GIFs.
• Follow Pinterest's Ad Standards.

Every campaign has three levels: Campaign, ad group, and ad. At the campaign level you pick the objective and can set an optional campaign spend limit. At the ad group level you choose where your ads will show on Pinterest and set the budget, bid, run dates, and targeting.

Pinterest campaign objectives and what you bid for

Every campaign starts with an objective, which Pinterest says decides how you bid in the ad auction and what ad formats are available to promote. The table shows each objective and its custom bid.

Consideration and sales campaigns can optimize for Pin clicks or outbound clicks, not both, within one campaign. If you optimize for outbound clicks, you must also select Performance+ bidding, and either way you will be billed on Pin click.

Shopping ads are set up in a campaign with the Sales objective. To run them, you first upload your products to Pinterest as product Pins, and Pinterest offers four types of shopping ads once the catalog is in. Keyword or interest targeting is not necessary for sales campaigns. Pinterest says shopping ads are only available in some of the ad markets.

Pinterest ad formats and specs

The table lists the main limit for each format, from Pinterest's ad spec guide.

Titles take up to 100 characters, and depending on the device the first 40 characters may show in people’s feeds, so put the product name first. Descriptions take up to 800 characters. Descriptions do not appear when viewing the Pin in the home feed or search feed, but Pinterest uses them to determine relevance for delivery, so write one for every ad.

For standard width video, Pinterest recommends square (1:1) or vertical (2:3, 4:5, or 9:16).

How to set up a Pinterest ad account

You can set up as many as 50 ad accounts per business account, but one is easier to manage for a single shop.

1. Get a business account

   Convert your profile or create a new business account. It is free.

2. Create the ad account on a computer

   In Business Manager, open Ad accounts and create one. Pinterest says you need to use your desktop to create an advertiser account.

3. Choose the country and currency carefully

   The first time you open Ads Manager, your country choice will determine your billing currency and you won’t be able to edit this later. If you pick the wrong billing currency, you will need to create a new account.

4. Add a payment method

   Pinterest accepts major credit and debit cards. It does not accept prepaid cards, Paypal, or cards not listed.

5. Install the Pinterest tag

   The tag is code on your website that lets Pinterest track visitors to your site, as well as the actions they take on your site after seeing your Pinterest ad. After you install it, data can take up to 24 hours to appear in Ads Manager.

How to promote a Pin on Pinterest

To promote a Pin, you open a Pin you own, choose Promote, and set a goal, budget, and duration. Pinterest says the feature is rolling out gradually and is currently available only to some US accounts. You can only promote Pins you created or uploaded on your account, and only Pins that include a destination link. If you have no business or ad account yet, Pinterest says it will create them for you as part of the boosting process. Review can take 6-12 hours, and once the Pin is approved you are charged from your budget as it delivers.

A quick create campaign asks for an objective, the Pins, any age or location limits and a daily budget. Bidding and any additional targeting, outside of age and location requirements, are completely automated, and Pinterest defaults to targeting all genders and devices. It recommends letting the campaign run for at least 10 days.

A custom campaign in Ads Manager lets you set every option yourself and add up to 10 ad groups at a time. You can target by keywords or interests, or upload customer lists for retargeting campaigns. Review can take up to 24 hours after launch.

How bidding and budgets work

Every objective except video completion lets you choose between two bid types. Performance+ bids are managed by Pinterest instead of you. Custom bids are manually set by you, as a maximum or a target cost depending on the objective.

Performance+ bidding is available for consideration, leads, sales and brand awareness campaigns, and is the default setting. Pinterest updates the bids several times a day. Its help page warns that this strategy can produce cost fluctuation, usually at the beginning of a campaign, and that ad group level budgets are still required.

With a custom bid, every campaign has a different bid floor, or minimum bid, and the minimum bid will depend on which countries you select your campaign to target. In Pinterest's own example of a click campaign targeting the US, the floor is $0.10. You pay the minimum amount required at any given time, whatever your bid.

Budgets come in two types. A daily budget is a max amount you’d like to spend each day. A lifetime budget is an amount you’d like to spend over the course of your campaign. Choose with care: the budget type can’t be edited once the ad group has been created.

Advertising on Pinterest: cost and billing

There is no fixed price per ad. Pinterest says you have complete control over how much you want to spend, and that what you pay depends on the budget and spend limits that you set for your campaigns.

Pinterest bills your spend on the first day of the following month, or when you reach your billing threshold, whichever comes first. A billing threshold is an amount of spend that triggers a charge at the end of that day. In Pinterest's example, the first threshold is $50, and as payments succeed your billing threshold will increase until it reaches a final threshold amount. When you hit a threshold you are charged for the total amount of spend up until the end of that day, so the amount may be greater than the billing threshold.

A Custom Billing Threshold sets a lower spending amount to trigger a charge sooner than your billing threshold. It is only available for ad accounts billed in USD. You can prevent further spend by pausing your ads, which stops your Pins from serving.

Example, with assumed numbers: a shop's threshold is $50 and it spends its $15 daily budget in full each day. After four days its spend is $60, past the threshold, so the card is charged $60 at the end of the fourth day.

A first Pinterest campaign for a small product shop

These steps apply Pinterest's defaults and advice to a shop with a few products and a small budget. Change one thing at a time so you can see what made the difference.

1. Pick one goal

   Use consideration if you want visits to product pages. Use sales only once your catalog is uploaded and the Pinterest tag reports purchases.

2. Start with one ad group

   Keep one audience and one budget in a single ad group, so results are not split across groups. Pinterest recommends targeting all placements to begin.

3. Use a daily budget and Performance+ bidding

   A daily budget caps spend each day. Keep the default Performance+ bidding until you know what a click is worth to you.

4. Add two or three ads

   Pinterest lets you create multiple ads in a single ad group to test which variations in creative work best. Use your best product photos, shot vertically, each with a clear title and description.

5. Let it run before you judge it

   For leads campaigns, Pinterest suggests you do not make more than two rounds of changes per week, and allows three to five days after each change. We suggest the same patience for a first campaign of any kind.

6. Check spend against sales

   Compare spend with the orders the tag reports, and pause ads that do not pay back.

Pinterest ads best practices from Pinterest's creative guide

The points from Pinterest's creative guide that matter most for a product shop:

• Shape: aim for a vertical 2:3 aspect ratio. Pins with a taller ratio might get cut off in people's feeds.
• Branding: Your logo or brand name should be clearly visible on every ad.
• Products: Make your products the star, and show people using them in realistic settings.
• Copy: Pinterest asks for concise messaging, clear branding and specific CTAs on every creative asset.
• Refresh: Pinterest suggests you monitor key performance metrics like engagement to see when to try new content.

If you plan to run shopping ads, Pinterest's merchant guidelines ask for a website with easy-to-find contact details, shipping policy, and refund policy. Check that before you upload a catalog.

Where Nation fits

Questions about Pinterest ads