Update Your Catalogs: Pinterest’s Advice for Brands

Pinterest has emerged as a crucial platform for product discovery, engaging millions of users who prioritize personalized product searches and tailored recommendations. This trend presents brands with a significant opportunity to connect with an audience that is actively looking to make purchases during their shopping journeys. Recently, Pinterest released a set of best practice guidelines aimed at helping brands enhance their product listings and optimize formatting.

According to Pinterest, brands must keep their catalog feeds up-to-date by regularly revising essential details such as features and pricing.

As Pinterest states: “Your product catalog (or feed) is how Pinterest understands what you sell. It shapes who you reach, what they see, and how often you enter the auction, so missing, vague, or incorrect fields can impede even a robust campaign.”

Brands that utilize titles incorporating brand-specific keywords have reported a 28% increase in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), while those using pattern keywords saw a 22% increase in ROAS.

“Enhanced inputs provide Pinterest with greater opportunities to match your products to high-intent searches. Given Pinterest’s focus on discovery, a solid feed can increase your product visibility during the exploration phase of shopping,” the company explained.

To ensure brands meet these requirements, Pinterest advises catalog managers to include relevant titles that showcase both the brand and product type, as well as at least one key detail.

Brand managers can discover effective strategies by searching for comparable products within the app and examining the titles of top-ranking items. Pinterest suggests that marketers should revise weak titles and descriptions to align more closely with common search terms (for instance, “summer wedding guest dress” or “back-to-school backpack”).

Ensuring that all product information fields are fully completed is another key recommendation from Pinterest. This includes descriptions, pricing, availability, and images. Brands should upload their entire catalog rather than just a limited selection of featured items, as emphasized by Pinterest.

The significance of data tracking is also highlighted, with a focus on allowing Pinterest’s systems access to post-click insights. This access can enhance the accuracy of the app’s recommendations.

“Improved signals enable Pinterest to identify individuals who are likely to purchase, rather than just click, and to understand which actions are most likely to lead to checkouts,” Pinterest noted. “On average, web advertisers utilizing the Conversions API alongside the Pinterest Tag experienced a 9.0% improvement in average Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and a 23.7% increase in attributed conversions compared to setups relying solely on tags.”

Given this, marketers should review their configurations to ensure their optimization objectives are set correctly, Pinterest advised. utilizing the platform’s Conversions API and Pinterest Tag will help provide additional signals.

Marketers should also monitor their conversion data within Ads Manager to confirm that events are appropriately tagged.

Additionally, Pinterest recommends against overly segmenting catalog listings into numerous subcategories, as this can limit optimization data.

“Shopping ads perform best when each ad group or product group contains a sufficient number of SKUs to identify patterns. Fewer but deeper groups provide the system with more signals to connect your products with the right consumers,” Pinterest emphasized.

Over-segmenting catalog listings can restrict this aspect and hinder the learning process.

“On Pinterest, we recommend having at least 500 SKUs in an ad group, as groups with fewer than 100 SKUs have shown a 13.6% lower ROAS,” Pinterest elaborated.

Marketers should consider combining very small product groups with shared goals and strive for larger, more meaningful groupings.

Pinterest also advises running campaigns for extended periods to leverage systematic learning regarding user response behaviors. Since consumers often plan their purchases weeks or months in advance, maintaining consistency in product purchase pathways is essential for fostering a reliable and efficient shopping experience.

In this context, accurate pricing is especially crucial. Brands must ensure that the price displayed on Pins aligns with the price on the linked page, and any additional costs should be clearly outlined whenever feasible.

These insights can help refine the Pinterest shopping experience, ensuring that the information presented in Pin listings is accurate, consistent, and meets user expectations.