You’re probably thinking Pinterest is still that place people visit to collect ideas about home decor or wedding dresses. In reality, Pinterest has transformed into something far more powerful for online retailers: a visual discovery platform where inspiration directly converts to sales.
The shift is stark. Two-thirds of Pinterest’s revenue now comes from driving conversions, not just awareness. For Australian ecommerce brands, this means the platform has become a viable, cost-effective alternative to Facebook and Google Ads, with some brands reporting lower acquisition costs and higher average order values than other social channels.
Whether you sell fashion, home goods, beauty products, or furniture, Pinterest offers a pathway to reach shoppers who are actively planning their next purchase. The question isn’t whether Pinterest works for ecommerce. It’s whether your brand is ready to capture the demand already sitting there.
Why Pinterest Is a High-Intent Shopping Engine
Pinterest’s defining characteristic is its users. Unlike platforms where people scroll passively, Pinterest users demonstrate 5.6x higher purchase intent than the social platform average, with 75% of weekly Pinners in active purchase mode versus 28% on Facebook and 41% on Instagram. These aren’t casual browsers. They’re planners.
Pinterest is future focused. People use it to plan, discover, and make decisions, which means they often arrive with a level of intent already in place. This creates a strong opportunity for brands to appear at the right moment, influencing decisions and driving action through visually led content.
The Intent Signal: What Users Are Actually Searching For
97% of top Pinterest searches are unbranded, dominated by descriptive, intent-rich queries like “living room ideas” and similar product or lifestyle searches. This creates an opening for brands. Users aren’t searching for you specifically, they’re searching for solutions. Your job is to appear when they do.
Saves are one of the highest-intent signals on social media, and Pinterest’s internal data shows users save over 1.5 billion Pins each week. When someone saves a Pin, they’re often planning a purchase, a project or a future decision. For brands, that means your content has a chance to influence buyers long after it’s first posted.
Shopping on the Platform: The Core Mechanic
Pinterest’s shopping experience is built for conversion. Pinterest Shopping has matured into one of the platform’s primary growth engines. Catalog-driven shopping ads, Pinterest TV live shopping, and direct integrations with major eCommerce platforms now combine to deliver conversion economics that rival or exceed traditional eCommerce paid search for visual product categories.
Merchants with catalogues see 5x more impressions than those who don’t. The gap is substantial. A product catalog connected to your campaigns isn’t optional for serious sellers, it’s foundational.
The Financial Case: Cost and Returns
Pinterest advertising remains relatively cost-effective. Brands typically spend between $0.00 and $2.00 per conversion, while 26% of advertisers spend just $0.00 to $0.10 per click. Compare that to Meta channels, where CPCs typically run higher, and the platform’s efficiency becomes clear.
Shopping Ads have the highest ROAS at an average of 2.3x, higher than awareness (1.2x) and consideration campaigns (1.7x). For brands focused on sales, not vanity metrics, this return makes Pinterest worth the test.
Setting Up Pinterest Ads: The Tactical Foundation
Knowing why Pinterest works is one thing. Building campaigns that actually convert is another. The gap between launching ads and launching successful ads comes down to structure and setup.
Building Your Product Catalog
Your catalog is the engine that drives shopping ads on Pinterest. Without it, you’re limited to promoted pins, which don’t leverage your full product depth. Your product data source is the backbone of your Pinterest presence. It’s a list of your products and their corresponding attributes, enabling you to create discoverable product Pins.
Focus on quality product information. Use detailed descriptions (80 characters or more) with relevant keywords, showcase high-quality visuals with your product as the focal point and create comprehensive product titles including brand name, colour, pricing and sizing.
Pinterest integrates directly with Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. If you’re running one of these platforms, setup is straightforward. The platform pulls your product data automatically, keeping pricing and inventory in sync.
Campaign Structure and Bidding Strategy
Under the Catalogue Sales objective in Pinterest Ads Manager, you’ll find three primary bidding strategies designed to align with your business goals: each one serves a different purpose depending on the outcomes you’re aiming for, whether that’s driving more value, generating more volume or boosting traffic.
For most ecommerce brands, ROAS bidding helps Pinterest deliver your ads to people most likely to convert with higher-value transactions. It’s ideal for brands with variable basket sizes who want to get the most value from their spend. Pinterest Performance+ ROAS bidding builds on this by using machine learning to adjust bids in real time, prioritizing transactions likely to have higher checkout values. It’s especially effective for retailers or any brand with variable order sizes, helping to increase total ROAS without a big rise in CPA.
Creative Formats That Drive Clicks and Sales
Pinterest’s format mix has shifted decisively toward vertical and video-led surfaces. Idea Pins (Pinterest’s vertical short-form format) and Pinterest TV (live and recorded shopping video) are now the platform’s highest-performing creative units by every engagement metric.
The minimum viable Pinterest creative pipeline in 2026 is 60-70% vertical video (Idea Pins / Pinterest TV) with 30-40% catalog-driven static. If your team is still building 100% static product pins, you’re leaving significant reach on the table.
Targeting High-Intent Audiences
Pinterest’s targeting suite is built on first-party data, not the third-party cookies that are disappearing elsewhere. Because people use Pinterest to find new ideas and to shop, you get strong signals into people’s interests and intent. The psychographic targeting suite helps you to tap into this first-party data and hone in on the people who are most likely to be interested in your content.
Start with keyword targeting. You could target anyone interested in beauty content on Pinterest at the category level. Or you could go deeper with keyword targeting and target people searching for topics such as ‘workout’ or ‘aesthetic workout clothes’. The second strategy might reach a smaller audience, but it can help to improve results if you’re looking to reach people with high intent for a specific product or topic.
For retargeting, by securely integrating your CRM data with Pinterest’s Ads Manager, you can tailor campaigns to specific customer groups. Import a list of hashed emails or mobile ad IDs from your CRM to Ads Manager and you can target or exclude existing customer groups. This helps you to cross-sell or upsell more efficiently, since you’re using existing behavioural and purchase data to tailor your campaigns.
Quick Wins: 5 Actions to Start This Week
- Set up your product catalog in Pinterest Ads Manager. If you haven’t already connected your catalog, merchants with catalogues see 5x more impressions. This single step is often the difference between test and scale.
- Audit your top 5 performing pins. Identify the top five with highest save rates, rebuild content around those themes, rotate pin designs weekly to find lowest-CPC winners, and prioritize evergreen content over trending topics for sustained impression growth.
- Build a vertical video creative. The performance gap between Idea Pins and standard pins is wider than the gap between Reels and static posts on Instagram. Brands still publishing predominantly static product pins are leaving the majority of organic reach on the table.
- Segment your audience by intent level. Create separate campaigns for high-intent keyword searches versus broad interest targeting. High-intent keywords will convert faster but reach fewer users. Broad targeting builds awareness for future consideration.
- Plan for at least 30 days. Pinterest advertising tends to work best as a medium to long-term strategy. For meaningful results, it’s recommended to run Pinterest ads for at least three to four weeks. Short campaigns often end before Pinterest’s algorithm has enough data to optimise delivery and performance.
So, What Now?
Pinterest is no longer a sideshow for ecommerce brands in Australia. Pinterest has spent several years trying to prove that it can turn a highly intentional user base into a more durable performance advertising business. Q1 2026 suggested that this transition is becoming more credible.
If your current strategy relies only on Facebook and Google Ads, you’re missing a channel with lower CPCs, longer content lifespan, and users who arrive already planning their purchases. The cost to test is minimal. The upside, for the right product categories, is significant.
Ready to explore Pinterest Ads for your ecommerce brand? Bleo’s digital marketing team can help you build, launch, and optimise campaigns that reach high-intent shoppers planning their next purchase. Whether you’re testing Pinterest for the first time or scaling existing campaigns, we’ve helped Australian retailers turn inspiration into sales.
