Pinterest Ads Manager: Complete Guide for 2025

“Do people even still use Pinterest?”

Yes, they do. That’s only if you count the 10.6% user growth between 2024 and 2025. Or the fact it’s quietly outpacing Instagram and TikTok in that department. According to Adobe, it’s currently a “go-to search engine,” with one in five shoppers reporting they trust the platform’s results more than Google.

Pinterest Ads let you reach shoppers in the planning phase—before they Google, before they hit Amazon, before your competitors even realize they’re in-market.

They help you claim the shelf before the shelf.

Ahead, learn how to create Pinterest ads step by step, plus discover best practices to ensure your first campaign actually performs.

What are the benefits of Pinterest advertising?

Pinterest is quickly becoming the go-to site for finding new ideas and planning purchases, with more than 570 million monthly active users. Ads on Pinterest absolutely can—and do—work for businesses with products and services that are a good fit for the platform.

Ads on Pinterest can work in three different ways:

1. Your ads can earn you more sales

Organic reach on Pinterest is already pretty impressive, especially as the platform reaches 28% of high-income earners. When it comes to ads, shoppers who are exposed to Pinterest campaigns buy, spend, and show up more often.

Research commissioned by Pinterest in partnership with LiveRamp reveals that people on the platform spend 26% more each year than “non‑Pinners.” These users visit stores 25% more often, and walk away with baskets 6% larger on average.

In campaign lift studies analyzed across 10 UK offline retail case studies, Pinterest ads delivered a 21% higher overall sales lift and yielded eight times higher spend per converted customer compared to other social platforms.

But your own results will vary depending on your products, your target audience, and how you approach Pinterest advertising.

Ads on Pinterest generally work best for merchants who run stores in those industries that dominate Pinterest feeds to begin with:

• Home décor
• Cooking
• Fashion
• Beauty
• Handmade goods

This doesn’t mean that only businesses within these verticals can rock Pinterest ad campaigns and see great results. Instead, it may require fine-tuned targeting or a more creative angle.

2. Your ads can be shown to users who are browsing on Pinterest

In this case, your ad would either be shown to users who are browsing categories relevant to your Pinterest ad or in the feeds of users that Pinterest believes would be interested in your product.

This interest is typically gauged based on past behavior on the platform, including the pins they’ve saved, though advertisers can target specific users based on things like email lists or recent site visits.

3. Your Pinterest ads can also appear in search results on Pinterest

If someone is searching for “handmade vase” and you happen to sell those, your ad could appear in their search results.

As you can imagine, this option lets you promote your products to users who are intentionally seeking them out.

📚Read more: How to Sell Your Products on Social Media

Pinterest ad types

You can use Pinterest to display a wide variety of ad formats throughout the platform. Here are the types currently available.

Standard pins

Standard pin ads are the same as regular pins, except they say “Promoted by” next to your company name.

They come in vertical or square static image format and offer the opportunity to illustrate your brand in Pinterest’s native format.

You can add your logo, a link, and a short text overlay, which will be indexed for search. You can also add a longer description (up to 500 characters) so that users who click to expand your pin can read more (make sure to optimize this for readability and search).

In 2023, Pinterest combined standard pins with idea pins. Now standard pins can be a mix of images, video, or both, with a flexible aspect ratio. You can edit them to add creative elements such as stickers and music, and promote them as you would other pins.

Video pins

Video pin ads are a particularly eye-catching form of Pinterest ad. Not only do they give you more space for creativity and attention-grabbing visuals, but you can also convey more information in them—for instance, highlighting a whole range of products rather than just one.

The above search results for “carry on luggage” include a video ad from Monos, which stands out among the static pins.

Six to 15 seconds is the recommended length per Pinterest video pin, and you can use sound—just remember that not everyone browses with sound enabled, so prioritize visuals.

Make your video pins in the standard vertical form, or opt for a wide version. Pinterest video ads can be up to four times larger than regular pins, making a square that covers two columns.

Premiere Spotlight

Released in 2023, Premiere Spotlight lets your video ads take up to the entire width of the Pinterest experience when users see them on the mobile app. 

These examples show Premiere Spotlight ads in search results and the home feed.

Carousel pins

Carousel pin ads look just like standard image pins, except users can swipe or click them to reveal two to five additional images.

Above, Cozey’s ad includes three dots below the pin image, indicating that it’s a Pinterest ad with an image carousel.

As with standard pin ads, your company name will appear under a “Promoted by” label, so users know it’s a promoted ad, and an “x/x” counter to highlight which part of the carousel is being displayed. Carousel ads are great for sharing product information, product ranges, or product action shots.

Shopping pins

Shopping pins allow users to click through and purchase, either via a Buy button that keeps them within the Pinterest app, or a link that directs them to an ecommerce site.

Import items from your product catalog to create a shopping pin or use the Shopify Pinterest app for a seamless experience with your Shopify store.

And whatever you do, don’t sleep on shopping pins—Pinterest data shows that brands who use them boast a 15% higher return on ad spend (ROAS) and a 2.6-times higher conversion rate (CTR).

Collections

Collections ads are data-rich pins that appear as a single, large hero image or video, with three smaller assets below them. Pinterest users can tap and expand them for a full-screen display that shows up to 24 secondary items.

Collections ads appear only in the mobile app feed and are effective at piquing interest. Choose your most attention-grabbing item for the main image, then expand into your full product range with the rest. You can create collections ads manually or by importing data from your catalog, just like with shopping pins.

Quiz ads

Quiz ads are dynamic, enabling you to poll your audience directly inside a pin. This is a great way to personalize the user experience and direct different users to different pages, depending on their results.

Showcase ads

Showcase ads display multiple pins in a single ad so you can link out to different pages and products. These are perfect for launching new collections or showcasing a variety of product types at once.

🧠Learn more:Pinterest Affiliate Marketing: How to Make Money Pinning

Idea ads

Idea ads are multi-page, full-screen formats built to inspire. They let you tell a rich story through a series of images or videos paired with text overlays, product tags, and a destination link. Viewers can follow your account, save the ad, or click through to shop.

Lead ads

Lead ads help you collect customer info directly on Pinterest. Shoppers can fill out a native form without ever leaving the platform. You control the form’s description, questions, and confirmation message. Responses can be downloaded for up to 30 days via Ads Manager, API, or synced automatically with tools like Zapier and Salesforce.

Pinterest Ads Manager interface

Before you launch your first campaign, it helps to get your bearings inside Pinterest Ads Manager. Here’s a quick lay of the land:

Navigating the dashboard

When you first open Ads Manager, you’ll land on the “Ad account overview” dashboard. This is where you’ll get a bird’s-eye view of your ad activity (once campaigns are running). 

Here’s what the dashboard lets you do:

• Choose your time range: Filter performance data by seven,14, 30, or 60 days to zoom in or out on trends.
• Set your conversion tracking window: Under “Conversion settings,” you can define:
• How long after a click or engagement a conversion should count
• Whether conversions tie to the click date or the conversion date

• Customize your metrics: Track up to five metrics at once. Options include:
• Spend
• Impressions
• Paid pin clicks
• CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions)
• CPC (cost per click)
• Paid CTR
• Paid saves
• Checkout
• ROAS (return on ad spend)
• Order value

• Review account-level performance: Once campaigns are live, the top panel will populate with totals for your selected metrics, giving you a real-time overview of overall ad performance.
• Get platform-driven recommendations: Pinterest will automatically surface optimization suggestions (e.g., campaign types to try, bids to adjust) once it detects data patterns.
• View and compare active campaigns: Below the overview, you’ll see a table showing all your live campaigns side by side, with columns for the exact metrics you selected. Sort by impressions, spend, or any other metric to see which campaigns are pulling their weight.

Campaign structure overview

Pinterest organizes ads in three levels: Campaign > Ad group > Ad.

1. Campaigns: This is the top level where you select your campaign objective, such as awareness, traffic, conversions, or catalog sales, and—optionally—set an overall campaign budget. If you’re running a consideration objective campaign, you can also choose the budget at this level.
2. Ad groups: Ad groups serve as containers for your individual ads. Here you configure targeting, set the budget and schedule, define your bidding strategy, and choose placements (home feed, search, etc.). If you’re testing different audiences or strategies, separate ad groups let you manage these changes without creating entirely new campaigns.
3. Ads: This is where your actual pins live in image, video, carousel, or collection formats. Each ad has its own creative and destination link. Multiple ads can run within an ad group to test different creative variations.

Pinterest ad specs and sizes

Each type of ad on Pinterest has a specific optimal size, defined as a ratio between its width and height. Make sure your visuals look their best, and that there are no parts missing around the edges. Here’s what Pinterest advises:

• Standard pins: 2:3 aspect ratio (1,000 pixels x 1,500 pixels)
• Standard video pins: 1:1 (square) or 2:3, 4:5 or 9:16 (vertical)
• Max width video pins: 1:1 (square) 
• Premiere spotlight: 
• Carousel pins: 1:1 or 2:3 aspect ratio
• Shopping pins: 2:3 aspect ratio
• Collections: 1:1 (square) or 2:3 (vertical) for the static hero image, square (1:1) or vertical (2:3 or 9:16) for the video
• Quiz ads: 2:3 aspect ratio
• Idea ads: 9:16 aspect ratio
• Lead ads:2:3 aspect ratio
• Carousel pin ads: 1:1 or 2:3 aspect ratio

When creating your ads, you’ll also have to consider the layout and copy. If part of your image is light-colored, for example, use dark text in your overlay copy.

How much do Pinterest ads cost?

Pinterest advertising cost typically falls into three main buckets:

• CPC (cost per click): What you pay when someone clicks on your ad.
• CPM (cost per mille): What you pay per 1,000 impressions.
• CPA (cost per action): What you pay when someone completes a desired action, like making a purchase, signing up for a list, or submitting a form.

In other words: CPC = clicks, CPM = views, and CPA = results.

Pinterest ad costs vary widely, depending on your objectives, audience, and other factors. Below, data from WebFX provides a range, but you won’t know the exact cost of your ad until you start building it. 

• CPC (cost per click): 10¢ or less
• CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions): $1.50 or less
• Cost per conversion: Ranges from 50¢ to $2.00

Pricing factors and bidding strategies

Pinterest uses an auction-based ad system, which means instead of paying a fixed price, you bid for visibility. But don’t worry, it’s not a wild bidding war.

Bids are how you tell Pinterest what a result is worth to you. Pinterest offers two ways to set bids: custom bids (manual) and Pinterest Performance+ (automated).

You control how much you’re willing to pay, and Pinterest charges you just enough to beat the next best bid. Here’s what shapes pricing behind the scenes:

• Auction competition: If several social media advertising teams are targeting the same audience, placement, or objective, your bid needs to beat theirs to win the slot.
• Your campaign objective: Clicks are cheaper than conversions, and impressions are usually the lowest-cost objective. If you’re optimizing for checkouts or return on ad spend (ROAS), you’ll often pay more, but you’ll likely get higher-value results.
• Audience targeting: Broad audiences such as “fashion lovers” or “home décor” tend to be cheaper. Narrow audiences like “B2B tech buyers in NYC” cost more because fewer people match those filters—and more advertisers may be competing to reach them.
• Ad quality and engagement: Pinterest rewards ads that perform well. If your pin gets high click-through rates or saves, Pinterest may lower your effective cost, even if your bid is average.

📚Read more: How to Get More Followers on Pinterest

Average costs by industry

CPA is especially important for ecommerce brands because it tells you how much you’re spending to land a single conversion. Actual CPC and CPA benchmarks vary; some industries consistently run cheaper, others more expensive. Below are the latest global averages based on 2025 data from AdBacklog:

How to create a Pinterest ad

To create ads on Pinterest, you must have a Pinterest business account. Once you do, follow the steps below:

1. Create an automated campaign

Pinterest’s automated campaign builder, Performance+, is the fastest way to get ads up and running. It automatically sets your bids, optimizes delivery, and simplifies setup; it’s great for beginners or time-strapped teams.

To create a campaign, click the hamburger menu on the top-left. Under “Manage campaigns,” choose “Create campaign” to begin setting up your first promoted pin.

On the next screen, choose “Automated campaign.”

2. Manual campaign creation option

Click “Get started” under the “Manual campaign” card, and take the following setup steps:

1. Choose your objective: Start by selecting your campaign objective, such as brand awareness, video views, conversions, or catalog sales. You can also opt into Pinterest Performance+ optimization to automatically enhance delivery for better results.
2. Name your campaign and ad group: Add the campaign name and the ad group name; you can also choose an option to add URL parameters for tracking.
3. Choose your budget and schedule: Choose between a “Daily” or “Lifetime” payment; select your start and end dates, and enter any optional promotional details.
4. Set your targeting: Targeting is powered by Pinterest Performance+, but you can still customize key elements such as included countries, excluded regions, age group targeting, and audience lists (e.g., retargeting campaigns, actalikes, custom lists).
5. Add your ads: Each ad group must include at least one pin. Pinterest recommends adding URL parameters at the ad group level for consistency.

3. Select or create your pin

On this screen, you’ll see the option to select a pin from your boards or a paid partnership. Or, you can create a new pin.

When it comes to choosing which pin to promote, there are several strategies you can use to decide. These include:

• Using Pinterest’s analytics to find your top-performing pins: On this screen, you can sort pins by those that have been most saved or most clicked on in the past 30 days, giving you an idea of which pins your audience responds to.
• Strategically create new pins: If you want to, you can get away with being a little more promotional in a Pinterest ad than you would in a standard pin. This is particularly true if you want to push new app installs, since you likely won’t have existing pins to base your ads on. 

4. Choose your ad location

Next, choose specific areas where you want to show your ad. You can select or exclude specific countries, regions, and cities. You can also decide if your ad is for all ages or an 18+ crowd.

With the automated setup, Pinterest chooses the advanced audience targeting details to help your ad reach more people. 

5. Choose your budget

In this step, you’ll define how much you want to spend on your Pinterest campaign and when it should run.

Select between:

• Daily: Pinterest will aim to spend the budgeted amount each day.
• Lifetime(if available): Pinterest will distribute your budget across the full duration of the campaign.

Choose a start date and time, and set an end date if you wish.

6. Review your ad and publish

Last but not least, review your campaign details, then click “Publish.” And just like that, you created your first Pinterest ad!

7. Track your results

Once you’re running your campaigns, you can monitor progress and edit them at any time in the Pinterest Ads Manager. See which campaigns are running, how much you’re spending, and your results so far.

Check delivery, CPC, CTR, and conversions (CVR), and pause ad groups or duplicate top-performing ones.

If you have the conversion tag in place (which Shopify store owners can enable through the Pinterest sales channel), you can even track ROAS when users convert.

Pinterest tag setup and conversion tracking

To properly track performance and optimize for conversions, you’ll need to set up the Pinterest tag, which is Pinterest’s equivalent of the Meta pixel.

Pinterest’s tag provides valuable information, telling you what actions users take on a site after they’ve clicked on your Pinterest ad. Instead of just measuring the number of clicks, you can actually track how valuable their clicks are to you.

Installing the Pinterest tag

If you’re a Shopify merchant, skip manual code work with the Pinterest for Shopify app, which automatically installs tags and maps events such as page visits, add to carts, and checkouts.

1. Go to the Pinterest app listing in the Shopify App Store.
2. Click “Install app” and follow the prompts to connect your Pinterest business account.
3. Once you’re connected, the Pinterest tag will track page visits, add to carts, and checkouts.

If you’re not a Shopify merchant, or if you want granular control over event tracking, use this guide to manually install the Pinterest tag via Google Tag Manager.

Once your Pinterest tag is in place, head to Ads > Conversions > Test events in Ads Manager to verify it’s firing correctly. Pinterest will flag any missing or malfunctioning events so you can fix them fast.

Setting up conversion events

Once your base tag is installed, you’ll want to track specific actions, like purchases or signups, to optimize campaigns and measure ROI.

If you’re using the Pinterest app for Shopify, standard events are automatically tracked, including:

• Page visit
• View category
• Search
• Add to cart
• Checkout
• Purchase

💡Pro tip: Use the Pinterest Tag Helper Chrome extension to verify real-time event firing and troubleshoot issues.

Pinterest ads best practices

To get the most out of your Pinterest ads, follow these best practices and strategies to create pins that will stand out and generate clicks.

Test different strategies

Experimentation is your best friend with any kind of marketing. Test different strategies, pins, and targeting options like keywords to determine what resonates with your audience. 

Want to run A/B tests quickly for ads on Pinterest? Create multiple ads under a single ad group or campaign, or you can duplicate a past Pinterest ad campaign and add some changes. This way, you can test specific factors to see how they affect your results.

Make the most of your description

Images catch attention, and captions keep it. Use the description field to add context, explaining why users should click. 

Treat your pin descriptions like mini SEO meta tags. Use keywords your audience searches for so your pins show up in Pinterest and Google search results. 

Skip the hashtags

Pinterest is essentially a giant search engine, so hashtags don’t really have a place, even on organic pins. Users won’t be overwhelmingly tempted to click on hashtags to take them to a new topic when they’ve likely already searched to get where they want.

Skip the hashtags in your image description and use that valuable copy space for something that will better serve you.

Choose your landing page carefully

If you’ve run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns before, you know your landing page is important. Sending users directly to the content that they expect. Don’t send them to your homepage, or to a random lead offer, or subscriber page, or they’ll get frustrated and click away, even if they were interested in buying before—and they might not come back.

Use video

Pinterest ad videos autoplay on mobile devices and can help you stand out. How-to videos and brief product highlights both do well on the platform.

Your Pinterest videos should be:

• High resolution: Keep your videos sharp and professional for high clickability.
• Short: Users come to Pinterest to browse. Satisfy their needs with short, teaser videos.
• Good without sound: Pinterest videos autoplay without sound, and not all users will choose to enable it. Use on-video text and subtitles for the best results.

Optimize for pin longevity

Pinterest is more like a visual search engine than a news feed. That’s why a well-optimized pin can drive traffic and conversions for months—even years—after it’s first published. 

To take full advantage of this long shelf life, here’s how to optimize your pins for longevity:

• Re-pin high-performing content seasonally: If a pin did well last fall, bring it back next fall. Pinterest rewards engagement history, so reusing winning pins (or giving them a fresh twist) can extend their impact year after year.
• Design for clarity and branding: Add your logo or domain subtly to build brand recall over time, especially as pins get re-shared or saved to boards.
• Use keyword-rich descriptions: Include long-tail phrases naturally in your descriptions (e.g., best yoga mats for beginners, budget travel hacks for Europe).
• Don’t delete underperforming pins: Pinterest’s algorithm often surfaces older pins once they’ve aged, especially if they match a trending search later. Deleting them too early cuts off this long-tail potential.

Pinterest ad examples

Sweaty Betty

Sweaty Betty, a UK-based athleisure brand, wanted to grow its audience and inspire them to shop on Pinterest.

It created a full-funnel campaign using Shopping ads with direct links, tailored its product offerings to Pinterest trend data and user behaviors, and focused on products and exercises that resonated with its core demographic of women aged 18 to 54.

The campaign led to a 39% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS) year over year, a 34% lower cost per acquisition (CPA) compared to other channels, and established Pinterest as Sweaty Betty’s top-performing channel.

Dulux

Dulux, a legacy paint brand, needed to stay ahead of trends and appeal to a changing demographic in a competitive market.

It secured the Pinterest Predicts Trend badge, creating a multiobjective campaign with targeted ads that leveraged Pinterest’s trend data to reach users planning home improvements.

The campaign achieved a 23% higher ad recall compared to ads without the trend badge, a 21% higher click-through rate compared to internal benchmarks, and a 1.6-point lift in action intent.

e.l.f. Cosmetics

E.l.f. Cosmetics wanted to launch its new Lash ’N Roll mascara in a disruptive and unexpected way to target Gen Z and millennial makeup lovers.

It used Pinterest’s Premiere Spotlight video format, followed by a six-week retargeting campaign of standard video ads.

The campaign’s use of Spotlight Premiere boosted video completion rates by 11%, achieved a 13% higher video view rate with Gen Z compared to industry baselines, and successfully positioned e.l.f. as the first beauty company to use Premiere Spotlight on Pinterest.

Pinterest ads: Boost your marketing efforts

If you’re still unsure whether or not ads on Pinterest are right for you, it doesn’t hurt to run a few test campaigns and find out.

One important thing to remember is that ads on Pinterest shouldn’t be your sole focus in Pinterest marketing; they’ll be much more effective alongside organic campaigns.

For best results, emphasize both organic and PPC marketing on Pinterest, just like you would on other platforms.

Looking to get started with organic marketing on Pinterest? Check out Shopify’s guide to useful Pinterest tools.