On Friday morning Australian time, Pinterest kicked off its global Presents upfront event with a remarkable overture from CEO Bill Ready.
“For more than a decade, young people have been treated as test subjects in the largest social experiment in history,” Ready told the crowd assembled in the US and the 300-or-so people watching online in Australia and New Zealand.
“The costs of that experiment are only now coming into full view. In classrooms, at our kitchen tables and in courtrooms too. The biggest platforms in this industry knew what their products were doing to kids and they kept optimising for engagement anyway because it was working.
“Parental controls and screen time limits may help at the margins but thicker filters don’t make cigarettes less addictive and guardrails won’t fix a business model built to keep people glued to a screen. Now with AI, they’re running the same play again, faster and at a scale that will make the past decade look quaint.
“Except this time, the product doesn’t just decide what a kid looks at, it talks back, pretending to be a friend and competing to replace a real human connection. I’m a parent, I know many of you are too and I don’t accept that. Pinterest has never accepted that and you don’t have to either.
“Nobody in this room wants to advertise in a place that harms kids. You just haven’t had an alternative.”
Pinterest, Ready and the team believes, is that alternative, describing it as a “fundamentally” different platform than it was a few years ago. New technology, including AI, has helped it make leaps and bounds on becoming a performance-driving platform, something that he was “proud” to announce.
Read more: Pinterest Global Chief Business Officer: In The Future, I’ll Be Proud Of Our Safety Record
Ready’s speech has echoes of that given by Nine CEO Matt Stanton who told agencies and marketers in Sydney last week that the way they invest their advertising dollars can make the lives of Australians better.
“The decisions you make on where to put your ad dollars has an impact on our industry and our country,” Stanton said.
“When you’re next asked how your business is supporting Australian media, there’s a very tactful and easy answer: go all in with Nine and demand real accountability… You’re investing in everything you see here tonight: Australian news, sport and entertainment. When you back Australian media to grow your business, you also make Australia a better place to live, work and do business.”
Better performance, more control
To that end, Pinterest made a number of product announcements throughout the show.
The first was Visual Search Ads, which places advertisers in Pinterest Search Results and Pin closeups.
This, it said, pairs keyword relevance with a distinctive new ad format to reach people as they search, compare and move closer to a decision. Advertisers can bid for a top response and connect users directly to their site, creating a new performance opportunity while consumers are still shaping what they want. This new format is also compatible with Pinterest Performance+, its AI-powered performance advertising suite. Visual Search Ads will be available in beta for eligible advertisers in all Pinterest ad markets in the coming weeks.
Pinterest has also brought its Business Assistant to Australian advertisers following closed-beta testing in the US. The tool is a new collaborator in Ads Manager that brings AI-powered guidance to advertisers to better manage performance, workflow efficiency and interoperability. It combines an understanding of an advertiser’s business with Pinterest’s platform insights to help advertisers drive the best performance, building on the approach pioneered by Pinterest Assistant.
For example, if “clean beauty routine” searches are up 42 per cent one week and an advertiser wants to join in, Business Assistant can represent how user interest grew, alongside real Pins leading the Trend to inspire their ads. It is a visual-first tool, too, unlike other AI chatbots.
“By bringing AI-powered tools to Pinterest, we’re helping local brands better understand consumer intent, create more meaningful connections and drive stronger business outcomes,” said Melinda Petrunoff, Pinterest’s ANZ MD.
Pinterest Performance+ is also adding Priority Products, which gives advertisers more control over which products they promote during key shopping moments such as a seasonal launch, promotion or category push.
It is also extending Pinterest Intelligence beyond its Ads Manager too with a new MCP server that will plug into third-party AI tools and workflows used by agencies and marketers. This should enter a beta testing phase shortly.
It has introduced self-serve A/B testing to help advertisers and agencies test campaign strategies, validate impact and optimise, across creative, targeting and within Pinterest Performance+.
Also new is App Promotion, which offers a purpose-built objective for app installs for mobile-focused campaigns. It is live in global beta with qualified advertisers. Pinterest said that one advertiser saw up to an 85 per cent improvement in cost per install compared to previous workarounds.
A new tool called Restyle has launched in beta in the US and Canada and lets users upload a photo to reimagine a space, test ideas and compare options in their own home.
The company’s CTV series, Bring My Pinterest to Life is returning for a second season. It pairs Pinterest users with creators and brands to transform boards into real-life spaces, experiences and looks.
Touch grass
Students of Pinterest’s railing against the wider forces at play in the world of digital media (including B&T) will be familiar with the platform’s recent brand campaign, ‘How Did They Do It?’
“It’s a nostalgic yearning for a time that has passed and also this feeling inside use that we’re missing something that people in the 60s, 70s and even 80s had before all these devices,” Xanthe Wells, Pinterest’s global VP of creative, told B&T during our Cairns Crocodiles festival earlier this year.
“Gen Z is rejecting the very technology it grew up on. What makes it so interesting is they’re not just asking for less screen time, they’re asking for the things that screens replaced,” Wells added.
It’s a compelling idea. But for digital advertisers it, quite literally, doth butter no bread.
“How do we navigate this cultural reckoning when almost three-quarters of media spend is digital?” said Claudine Cheever, Pinterest’s CMO during the upfront.
“Touching grass is awesome. We should all do more of it. But we’re also marketers and there are numbers to hit. Here’s what I think: the brands that win this next chapter won’t just capture attention, they’ll ignite intention… At their best, brands are a conduit to the real world: the meal with friends, the weekend road trip, the new home office. That’s where a brand’s value lives, not as a tax on people’s time but as a bridge to somewhere bigger.
“I’m not saying this because it sounds nice. I’m saying this because at Pinterest, we learned the hard way. We tried the classic social playbook, organising our feed like everyone else’s, including viral challenges and clickbait-y content…
“People on Pinterest are deciding what to try, buy or do next. They’re looking to discover brands, not scroll past them on their way to the next ‘Pesto the Penguin’ video… We leaned into the things that set us apart: visual search and image technology that recognises what’s in an image, but how all the pieces fit together. It’s not just the jeans, it’s the accessories, the makeup, nails and how you combine them to make it uniquely yours.”
This formula, Pinterest, believes is working and its proof-point is the rapid increase in engagement among Gen Z. The age group is the fastest growing cohort on the platform and makes up more than half its total user base. It has also produced results for brands, according to chief business officer Lee Brown. According to him, clicks to advertisers have grown five times over in the past three years from Pinterest.
It’s a compelling proposition that may make some think twice about where to invest their media.
