New Pinterest Product Launches

Since launching in 2010, Pinterest has been a space for users to search for inspiration and curate their ideas. As the platform has continued to scale, it has taken on a unique role in the social media space for marketers: it incorporates elements of search, social, and more recently, commerce.

In 2024, there are some exciting updates coming to the platform — some of which have already launched! — that will help build more customized, seamless experiences for users and provide advertisers with more tools to drive customers from inspiration to action. Let’s break down what these updates mean and how both users and advertisers will benefit.

User experience updates

The updates coming to Pinterest for users can be divided into three focus areas:

1. Using AI to increase personalized content. Pinterest has always been a space where consumers can create personalized visual representations of their goals. Whether it’s their dream bathroom they hope to create or ideas for the next game night they are hosting, Pinterest is a platform where users’ most abstract ideas can come to life. The updates coming to the platform will utilize AI to help users discover trends in the most personal way:

Users can now utilize AI to save past searches that describe their personal style. Terms like “Zen Industrialist” or “Organic Minimalist” can now be used to dynamically bring in results that are more unique to an individual user.

Pinterest has already introduced a new update to Guided Search this year. This allows users to utilize ChatGPT within searches to organize broader searches into more niche categories. For example, a user could search “kitchen ideas” as a starting point, and Guided Search will help them uncover new ideas and get more informed.

In an effort to make the platform more inclusive, Pinterest will introduce body type ranges. As outlined in the example below, this will allow users to select a body type filter to enable deeper personalization in their search results. Now available to all users, this feature helps to make the platform more inclusive by enabling users to change the models in images to have the body type that aligns with them personally.

2. Leaning into saving and curation. Saving pins to boards has always been at the core of Pinterest. This year, the platform is continuing to update this process to make board creation more organized and shoppable. Three key updates include:

Pinterest is introducing a new “saved” tab that will allow users to search, favorite, and organize their pins in one place. The platform will also leverage AI to make recommendations for board organization and saved content in a user’s profile.
Users will be able to share their boards to Instagram as a dynamic video that links back to their board on Pinterest (check out the video below!).

Within a board, users can leverage “collage pins” that will utilize visual technology to allow users to cut out images within a pin and combine them with other visual elements from other pins into one space. Within the collage, shoppable items will show brand, price, and a link to the product in the visual. This feature is available now to all users (with an example included below).

3. Advanced shopping features. “Shop the Look” is a feature that allows users to shop for products they see within a pin by getting a dynamic pop-up that links directly to that product or similar products. This feature was introduced in late 2023 and will come to video pins in early 2024.

Overall, these updates will encourage users to engage with content by making key features more accessible and incorporating elements of AI. While these updates will benefit its user base, Pinterest is also putting a focus on making the platform more powerful for brands to promote their business. These updates will also give brands the opportunity to incorporate the new features into their organic social strategies to make their posts more relevant to users.

Innovations for advertisers

Historically, advertisers have used Pinterest as a space to gain awareness for their brand. When Pinterest launched its advertising capabilities in 2015, it didn’t even have the ability to optimize for conversion actions, which were key components of success for advertisers running campaigns on competitor platforms like Google and Meta. Fast forward to 2023, when Pinterest made significant efforts to drive traffic to advertisers’ sites and integrate more ecommerce solutions into the platform. In 2024, they are shifting focus to make the platform shoppable and give advertisers access to more advanced tools with two major updates:

1. Advanced automation and creative tools. Like many social media platforms, Pinterest is utilizing AI to find ways to simplify campaign creation and improve performance. This year, they will unveil “Intelligent Campaigns,” a new campaign type that utilizes AI to drive incremental performance. Currently in beta testing, “Intelligent Campaigns” will have a dynamic creative optimization feature that can automatically adapt the creative for individual users at scale. This feature will be able to make visual edits, ad badges and calls to action, and produce AI-generated backdrops so ads are more relevant and drive better performance. These updates are designed to make it easier for advertisers to build campaigns that drive better performance than has historically been available.

2. Make ads more shoppable. Pinterest will be rolling out two noteworthy features to make ad units more likely to drive conversions:

Quiz ads. Introduced in 2023 as a consideration strategy, advertisers will now be able to generate a personalized set of shoppable products within “Quiz ads” that is based on the answers a user selects within the ad.
Shoppable video. This feature will introduce product tagging to video content with direct links clickable from the video. This will include the expansion of a shoppable “Spotlight” ad format, the one-day takeover ad unit that Pinterest introduced in 2023. Pinterest will also be expanding and updating product tagging to make it easier to tag products within images and ultimately increase performance.

These updates are meant to help marketers drive better sales performance from their video creative, an ad format that has been great at driving awareness in the past but doesn’t always translate to taking action.

What does this mean for marketers?

In recent years, Pinterest has made many efforts to make its advertising capabilities more impactful for brands despite struggling to keep up with innovations from competitors like Meta and TikTok. While this delayed innovation may have deterred advertisers from activating on the platform in the past, the recent push to make the platform more relevant for users and advertisers provides a unique opportunity for brands to gain market share. Why? The platform has increasingly become a space where consumers are actively going to engage with products that fit their style. With these updates — and more to be announced later in the year — Pinterest is becoming more relevant to users and advertisers alike.