Dynamic Product Ads for Pinterest allow advertisers to use their product catalog to create personalized ad creative at scale based on user behavior and intent signals.
Pinterest may not have reached the same scale as Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok; however, with over 522 million monthly active users, arguably more focused on product discovery, it’s a key marketing channel for any retailer or e-commerce brand.
Quick note: Pinterest simply refers to dynamic product ads, the term popularized by Meta, as shopping ads; however, we’ll use the terms interchangeably.
Pinterest's shopping ads push the boundaries of personalized marketing; they show people the products they're most likely to buy based on their previous actions, interests, and behaviors while layering in relevant information to drive conversions. Dynamic product ads on Pinterest enable you to reach potential customers through both prospecting and retargeting strategies so that you can reach relevant new audiences and keep your brand top of mind.
“DPA is bigger than anyone thinks. People are usually shocked to hear that 1/4th of all digital ads in paid social were dynamic product ads. Most major retailers and most major DTC brands are relying on DPAs as a workhorse in their ad accounts." - Dan Pantello, CEO of Marpipe
To understand dynamic product ads for Pinterest or for any platform, you have to understand the power of a product feed.
A product feed is a file containing information needed to display your products across online marketplaces, search engines, and social media channels, like Pinterest, that support commerce experiences.
In addition to basic product information like name, description, and price, a product feed includes both image and video asset links as well as any other attribute you want to test. These can include star ratings, “As Seen On _____”, sustainable messaging, or anything else you think might be relevant and improve conversions. When it comes to product feed fields, the more the merrier!
If you need a deeper understanding of product feeds, check out our guide to product feeds first and then come back to dive deeper into dynamic ads on Pinterest.
Pinterest’s DPAs function much like those on other platforms like Facebook and Instagram. They allow you to promote your products to people who are most likely to buy based on their behavior either on your site or within the Pinterest platform.
Every time a user gets a DPA served to them on Pinterest, the platform will layer in information directly from your product feed with an aim to increase conversions.
Pinterest shopping ads are cost-per-click ads just like any other placement on Pinterest and have the same attributes, such as daily budget caps, geo-targeting, and audience-based targeting, that any ad campaign would typically have.
Shopping ads provide multiple opportunities to stand apart from your competitors since they are displayed in different locations across the Pinterest platform, including home feeds, category feeds, and search results.
Pinterest has three different formats for its dynamic product ads that you can leverage. These include standard shopping ads, video shopping ads, and personalized collection ads. Let's go through them to see which one will be best suited for your DPA strategy.
Standard shopping ads are the traditional single-image ads; they're visually displayed as one product from a catalog on a user's Pinterest feed with a lone photograph. They're the easiest of the three to build, as they require minimum effort to create on the Pinterest platform.
If you want to take your advertising game up a notch, video shopping ads allow you to use video footage of your product to promote them. We’ll leave the creative part of making the perfect video ad to you. However, when setting up a video shopping ad campaign on Pinterest, all you need to do is include a link to the video asset in your product feed.
Similar to a carousel format you'd find on other social media platforms, Pinterest's personalized collection ads are made up of four images. They feature one large "hero" image to grab attention and three smaller images highlighting other specific products. Say you wanted to push multiple products from your catalog at once; personalized collection ads would be a great solution since they provide more advertising opportunities.
What You Need Before You Can Launch Your First Pinterest DPA Ad
Before you get started launching your first-ever DPA ads with Pinterest, there are a few things you need to set up in order to get the green light from them.
Pinterest requires all companies that want to run DPA ads through their site to set up a business account with them. It doesn't cost anything to register, and it also gives you access to some great analytics tools to track the performance of your ads.
With Pinterest’s catalog tool, make sure to upload your product feed so the platform can automatically create your ads with the essential data. You'll need to ensure you group your products effectively to promote the ones you want to sell most, or else your high-value items may slip through the cracks.
Adding this piece of code to your website allows Pinterest to track user activity and enables retargeting. Without it, you can’t make the most of DPAs.
Pinterest’s focus on product discovery and the shopping experience makes it powerful for broad reach targeting but also for retargeting previous visitors to your website. Dynamic shopping ads on Pinterest are a great way to keep audience’s engaged while delivering fresh creative messaging to further reduce that abandoned cart rate.
To ensure that you can take full advantage of this capability, don't forget to upload your product feed with all the necessary images, descriptions, and prices. Additionally, you'll need to install the Pinterest tag on your site and set up event tracking properly to further optimize your retargeting ads.
Choosing to advertise with Pinterest is one thing, but getting sustainable results is a whole other ball game. Here are some helpful tips to help you hit the ground running with Pinterest DPAs:
So that your budget is spent in the right places, we recommend you select Pinterest's automatic bidding feature. This guarantees the right users who are more likely to convert are being retargeted, and it's often done for a lower fee than normal.
It's important to divide your product catalog into subsets based on your user behaviors, product category, or popularity. By doing this, you'll be able to target sub-groups within your audience, so you're always getting the highest return on ad spend (ROAS).
In e-commerce, it's normal for your products' features to change frequently, so its important to keep your product feed up-to-date and as robust as possible. Campaign learning periods on Pinterest can take 3-5 days to exit and optimize, so be sure to plan accordingly when making time-sensitive changes!
Pinterest is an amazing platform for running DPA ads; its users are made up of 70% female and 30% male, most of whom use the platform for shopping ideas. However, its also a visually competitive platform so don’t settle when it comes to creative execution and differentiation.
Marpipe further enhances your DPA strategy with a creative platform that includes powerful templates and generative AI tools to ensure your products stand out among all those pins. The best part is that Marpipe is powered by your existing product feed so that you can create an infinite amount of creative variations to test, learn, and optimize all your DPA campaigns across Meta, TikTok, and, of course, Pinterest.
Want to find out more? Check out our pricing page for a full list of our plans to see which is the right one for you. Soon, you'll be crushing your goals for DPA ads on Pinterest!
