Advertise on Pinterest: Promote a Pin

Quick answer: To advertise on Pinterest, log in to Ads Manager with a business account, click the hamburger icon at the top left, then Create campaign. Pick the objective that matches your goal, set the ad group (who sees it, the budget and the schedule), choose the Pins to promote and click Launch. The objectives are Brand awareness for people to see your brand, Video completion for video views, Consideration for clicks, Leads for sign-ups and Sales for add-to-carts and checkouts. Some US accounts also see a Promote button on their own Pins, which fills the campaign in for them. Pinterest reviews every ad before it runs: up to 24 hours in Ads Manager, 6 to 12 hours for a promoted Pin. The tool above gives Pinterest’s own steps for your choice.

How to advertise on Pinterest: the two ways

Pinterest’s business help gives two ways to run an ad. The first is a campaign in Ads Manager, in three layers: the campaign (its objective), the ad group (the audience, the budget and the schedule) and the ads (the Pins you promote). Its steps start with Log in to your Pinterest business account, so you need a business account first: the Personal or Business Pinterest Account? tool has Pinterest’s steps to get one or convert yours. The second is the Promote button on a Pin, a shorter way that Pinterest is still rolling out: for now only a small group of US creators and high-engagement users see it, and it creates the business and ad accounts for you if you have none. Both go through Pinterest’s ad review before the ad shows. Pinterest lists the countries where ads run on its Ads availability page.

How to promote a Pin on Pinterest

From Promote a Pin: Promoting a Pin lets you quickly amplify your Pin content so it can reach more people. You’ll choose a goal, budget, and duration, and Pinterest will deliver your Pin to people who are more likely to engage with it. On a computer, click your profile picture at the top right, hover over the Pin and choose Promote, or open the Pin and select Promote. In the app, go to your profile, tap the Pin, then tap Promote on the image or video. The campaign is filled in: you confirm or edit the goal, audience, budget and duration, choose a payment method and click Promote and pay. On an iPhone or iPad the payment goes through Apple’s in-app payment flow. The button only shows on a Pin you created or uploaded yourself, never a repin, and only on one with a destination link. Then: All Promoted Pins go through an ads review process, which can take 6-12 hours from when you initially chose to promote. Once approved, your promoted Pin will start showing as an ad, and you’ll be charged from your budget as it delivers. To see how it does, Open your promoted Pin and tap or click See more stats. You’ll see metrics such as impressions, saves, and outbound clicks.

Which Pinterest campaign objective to choose

The objective is the first choice in Ads Manager, and it decides more than the name: Your campaign objective determines how you bid in the ad auction and what ad formats are available to promote. In Pinterest’s own words, from Campaign objectives and Simplified Objectives:

• Brand awareness: Help people discover your brand, products or other services.
• Video completion: Help increase the number of completed views (95% completion marker) for your video ads.
• Consideration: Help increase the number of Pin clicks or outbound clicks on your ad.
• Leads: Leads campaigns drive non-transactional outcomes, such as signups and leads
• Sales: Sales campaigns drive transactional outcomes, such as add-to-carts and checkouts

Two of Pinterest’s pages disagree on Leads. Campaign objectives still says Drive people to take actions like checkout, sign up, or add to cart on your website. The newer Simplified Objectives page puts checkout and add to cart under Sales, so choose by the action you want counted. Video completion also goes by a second name, Video views, in Pinterest’s table of ad formats. Which formats each objective can use, and their sizes, are in Pinterest Ad Specs.

Leads or Sales: the events each one counts

Simplified Objectives maps every event to one of the two. Sales counts add to cart, checkout, initiate checkout, add payment info, add to wishlist, customize product and a custom event mapped to a transactional event. Leads counts sign up, subscribe, submit application, start trial, lead, schedule, contact, find location and a custom event mapped to a non-transactional event. If you knew the old names: We replaced the Conversions and Catalog sales objectives (now known as legacy objectives) with the Leads and Sales objectives. Existing Conversions and Catalog sales campaigns remain editable until April 30, 2027, after which they will be archived.

Shopping ads from a product catalog

Additionally, you can use Pinterest Catalogs to create shopping ads in both the Consideration and Sales objectives. To use a catalog, select Product catalog as the creative source when setting up your campaign. In the Ads Manager steps that is the Creative source choice, right after the objective. A catalog comes from your shop’s product feed: the Pinterest Catalog Feed Checker reads a feed before you upload it, and Ready to Sell on Pinterest? walks through the rest of a shop’s setup.

How long Pinterest’s ad review takes

From Ad review: Once you create an ad, we review it to make sure it follows our Advertising Standards. The ad review process can take up to 24 hours. If you edit targeting or your ad description after submitting for ad review, your ad will be re-submitted for review. This may take an additional 24 hours. A promoted Pin is quicker, 6 to 12 hours. If an ad is turned down, If your Pin goes against our advertising guidelines, we'll send you a notification in your Ads Manager. Pinterest emails you the reason too, and To appeal an ad disapproval, email us with the disapproval reason you received and URLs to your ad(s).

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