Pinterest Ads Are the Most Underrated Channel in Ecommerce Right Now
Pinterest ads reach people who are actively planning what to buy, often at lower CPMs than Meta. Here's which niches win there, what the Ad Library shows, and how to launch your first campaign.
By
Kinnari Ashar
Read time: 4min
Everyone is fighting over the same Meta and TikTok auctions. Meanwhile, Pinterest has hundreds of millions of people planning purchases every month, and a fraction of the ecommerce advertisers. We dug into the Pinterest ads in the Winning Hunter Ad Library to see who is quietly winning there, and why.
Why Pinterest is underpriced right now
Pinterest ad costs haven’t caught up with the intent of its users. Across the stores we tracked that advertise on both platforms, Pinterest CPMs came in 30–50% below Meta for comparable audiences, while click-through rates held up in shopping-heavy categories.
Fewer advertisers per category means less competition in the auction.
Users arrive with a plan, not just to kill time.
Promoted Pins keep earning organic saves after the budget stops.
Most dropshippers never test it, so the creative space is far less crowded.
Intent, not interruption
On TikTok, your ad interrupts entertainment. On Pinterest, your ad is the content people came to find. That changes what works.
Search behavior
People search Pinterest the way they search Google: “small balcony ideas”, “fall capsule wardrobe”, “gift for new dad”. Your ad answers a query, which is why broad keyword targeting works better here than on most social platforms.
Longer shelf life
A TikTok creative can burn out in ten days. On Pinterest, we saw ads from home and decor stores stay live for four months or more without a visible drop in engagement.
Pins that keep earning
When someone saves a promoted Pin, it stays on their board and keeps circulating after the campaign ends. That organic tail doesn’t show up in your ROAS, but it does show up in your traffic.
Categories that win on Pinterest
Pinterest isn’t for every product. It rewards visual, aspirational categories where people plan ahead.
Home decor and furniture
Womenswear and accessories
Beauty and skincare
Wedding, party and gifting
Kitchen and household
Gadgets, novelty impulse buys and anything that relies on a shock-value hook tend to struggle. If your best TikTok ad works because it’s weird, it probably won’t translate.
What the Ad Library shows
Filter the Ad Library to Pinterest, sort by days active, and a pattern appears fast. The longest-running ads come from stores that treat Pinterest like a catalog, not a billboard.
Home and decor
Home stores led the dataset by volume. The winners showed products styled in real rooms, with one clear focal point and a neutral palette that fits the look of the platform.
Seasonality lead time
Pinners plan early. Seasonal searches start climbing 60 to 90 days before the event, so a holiday campaign launched in late November is already behind.
Pro tip
Use the date filter in the Ad Library to see when competitors launched last year’s seasonal creatives, then launch two weeks earlier than they did.
Beauty and wellness
Beauty ads that worked on Pinterest looked more like editorial than UGC. Flat lays, ingredient close-ups and step-by-step routines outperformed talking-head videos.
Ingredient-led brands did especially well. A clean close-up of the texture with a one-line benefit gave people something to save for later, and saves are what keep a Pin circulating.
Routine content
“Morning routine” and “skincare steps” Pins were among the most saved formats. They let a brand show several products in one ad, which tends to raise average order value.
Setting up your first Pinterest campaign
You don’t need a huge budget to get a read. A focused first campaign can tell you in two to three weeks whether the channel works for your store.
Install the Pinterest tag and the conversions API through your Shopify integration.
Sync your product catalog so shopping ads can run.
Start with one consideration campaign and one shopping campaign.
Budget around $30–$50 a day for two weeks before judging results.
Use broad targeting with a few keyword themes, and let the algorithm learn.
Judge the first two weeks on cost per add-to-cart and saves, not last-click ROAS. Pinterest shoppers often take longer to decide, and many come back through search or direct a few days later.
Creative that works on Pinterest
Reposting TikTok videos as-is rarely works. The best Pinterest ads in our dataset shared a few traits:
A 2:3 vertical format.
Lifestyle context instead of plain product shots.
Soft, natural colors instead of high-contrast feed graphics.
A clear, short title that matches what people search for.
Vertical, text-light, lifestyle
Think magazine page, not banner ad. The product should be the obvious focus, but in a setting the viewer would want to live in.
Text overlay rules
Keep overlays to one short line, like “The 5-minute linen refresh”, and leave the lower third clear. Pinterest places its own interface elements there.
Red flag
Heavy text, urgent discount badges and “BUY NOW” graphics look out of place on Pinterest. In our data they stayed live for a median of 11 days, versus 47 days for lifestyle creatives.
How to use competitor data before you spend
The fastest way to cut your Pinterest learning costs is to learn from brands already paying for it.
Search your niche in the Ad Library with the platform filter set to Pinterest.
Save the ten longest-running ads into a board.
Check the brands behind them in the Store library for revenue and traffic trends.
Add the top three to Brand tracking to see new Pins, landers and emails as they launch.
Ask the AI agent to break down why their top Pin works, then brief your own version.
We ignored Pinterest for two years because nobody in our founder groups talked about it. Three months in, it’s our cheapest channel for new customers, and our competitors still aren’t there.
That’s Hannah Kowal, founder of a small home textiles store on the Pro plan. Her story isn’t unusual in the data. The window won’t stay open forever, but right now Pinterest is one of the few places where a small store can still buy attention cheaply. For more on channel mix, read our guide to diversifying beyond Meta.
