Pinterest puts Visual Search Ads into search results and Pin close-ups

Pinterest Visual Search Ads will reach every Pinterest ad market in the coming weeks, the company said on 17 September at its Pinterest Presents event in New York. The format starts as a beta for eligible advertisers.

The ads show up in two places. One is the search results page. The other is the Pin close-up, the enlarged view a user opens after tapping a Pin. Each ad links to the advertiser’s own site. Pinterest says the placements run on “Pinterest Intelligence”, its name for the AI models that read images, products and user intent.

Pinterest pitches 80 billion searches a month

The sales pitch rests on search volume. Pinterest says users run more than 80 billion searches a month, most of them visual and more than half with a shopping intent. Modern Retail, which covered the event, reported that Pinterest also told brands 96% of its searches are unbranded. People type “green sofa”, not a brand name.

Chief executive Bill Ready said the ads sit at the moments “where people see, save and decide”. Marketing Brew quoted him calling Pinterest “now a performance platform”.

Priority Products and self-serve A/B tests join Performance+

Three more tools came with the launch. Priority Products lets advertisers in Performance+, Pinterest’s automated campaign type, push chosen products during a launch or a sale. Self-serve A/B testing compares creative, targeting and Performance+ settings without a Pinterest rep. App Promotion, a campaign goal for app installs, is in global beta for qualified advertisers. Pinterest says one unnamed app advertiser cut its cost per install by up to 85%.

Shoppers also get Restyle, a beta in the US and Canada. It lets people photograph a room and redesign it with AI. It is not an ad product, but it feeds the kind of visual searches the new ads are built for.

Visual search ads arrive as Google and OpenAI sell AI shopping space

The launch lands in a crowded month. Google has just opened AI performance insights in Merchant Center, which show how often a brand appears in AI Mode. OpenAI says ChatGPT ads now run at $1 billion a year. Pinterest’s argument is different: its users often arrive without a brand in mind, so smaller brands have a better chance of being found.

Retailers that already sync a product catalogue to Pinterest are the likeliest early users. Before the beta opens in your market, check the catalogue feed in your Pinterest ads account. Look for sharp product photos and correct categories, because a visual search ad can only match what the model can read in the picture.