Last week was Pinterest’s annual marketing summit, Pinterest Presents. During this summit, Pinterest typically shares news, product launches, and important updates for advertisers. Here are a few of my takeaways after watching Pinterest Presents 2024!

Takeaways from Pinterest Presents 2024

It’s a Positive Place

Pinterest shared that they’ve been focusing on creating a social media platform that helps create a better wellbeing. They claim that out of all the social media platforms that exist, they have the lowest overall rate of negative experiences and they lead the industry in user wellbeing. Their main slogan for this was, “A better internet is possible.”

They also mentioned that their try-on features don’t distort face features to ensure that it’s a positive place.

Why People Use Pinterest

According to Pinterest, people use their platform to find inspiration, curate ideas, and shop for products. They said people come to Pinterest ready to buy and with intent. According to their data, Pinterest usually expands their users’ taste—and their platform delivers a shopping experience that feels curated.

New AI Techniques Give Relevant and Engaging Ads

Pinterest claims that their ads platform has been more successful than ever before with ad impressions up 30%. Here a few new ad techniques they mentioned:

Collages

The collage feature has been available to users for a while now, but they are now testing it with ads for bigger brands.

Promotions and Discounts

They’re now allowing sales to auto-populate into ads for advertisers.

Can Create Generated Backgrounds for Products

Pinterest can now generate background imagery for products that will match the targeted person’s taste. For example, if the product is a lamp, they can create a background that is in a maximalist style using .AI. If that shopper prefers minimalist interiors, they can swap it with a minimalist background.

Other New Features

Boards in Your Feed

They said that users can now find advertisers’ entire boards in their search feeds, rather than single pins. This is important for us to know as we can now curate entire boards that will show up in search.

Performance+

They now have a “performance+” option for running ads that is more automated and tailored to your account. It supposedly helps make running campaigns easier and will help boost your ad impressions.

Final Thoughts as a Pinterest User/Marketing Expert

If you’re unfamiliar with Lucky Bee Creative Studio, I’ve been managing Pinterest accounts since 2018 for my clients. I shouldn’t have been, but I was really surprised while watching Pinterest Presents to see how much they were pushing Pinterest ads. Over the last few years it’s been harder and harder to market organically on Pinterest; I’ve also heard many complaints from users that Pinterest is now too ad-heavy. I understand why Pinterest wants that to be a focus of their business model ($$$), but it’s shocking to me how much they are neglecting what their users want and need.

Lastly, they also mentioned that advertisers should reflect their company’s values in their media choices–implying that Pinterest has good values. Sure, they have research that their platform is more positive than others out there, but it still felt manipulative to say that considering not every brand’s target audience uses Pinterest.

If you watched Pinterest Presents, what did you think? Let me know in the comments!