What Pinterest ads are
Pinterest ads are regular Pins that you pay to place where people are most likely to see them: in their home feed, in category feeds and in relevant search results. Before you promote a Pin, Pinterest asks that it meets a few requirements:
- It is saved to your own business profile and to a public board.
- It has a destination address, with no link shortener in the address or the description.
- It is not a third-party video or GIF, and it follows Pinterest's ad standards.
Business account and ad account
You need a business account to create ads. You can create a new one or convert a personal account, and a business account is free. A new business account can only be created on a desktop device for now.
Ad accounts sit under your business account in Business Manager, and you can set up as many as 50 of them, for example for different currencies or payment methods. The first time you open Ads Manager you select your country. This sets your billing currency, which you cannot edit later; to switch currency you create a new ad account.
Ads availability and Türkiye
Pinterest publishes the countries where ads are available to business accounts, and Türkiye is on that list. Its ads overview page splits these countries in two. In some, advertisers set up ad accounts directly through Pinterest. In others, Türkiye among them, ad accounts are managed and billed locally through Pinterest's advertising partners.
Pinterest names Httpool by Aleph, Mediadonuts by Aleph and DMS as these partners and lists a contact address for each country, including one for Türkiye. It says the partnerships offer in-market representation, local language support and deeper platform expertise. Shopping ads are only available in some of the listed markets.
Pinterest also has country rules. If your ad is shown in Türkiye, Pinterest does not allow ads for alcohol, brick-and-mortar casinos and pharmacies, over-the-counter drugs, or hospitals, doctors and medical services. Financial products and services must hold the relevant licences.
Objectives
Your campaign objective decides how you bid in the ad auction and which ad formats you can promote. With every objective you can let Pinterest manage your bids through Performance+, and most objectives also offer custom bidding.
| Objective | How Pinterest describes it | Custom bidding |
|---|---|---|
| Brand awareness | Helps people discover your brand, products or other services. | Maximum cost per thousand impressions |
| Video completion | Increases completed views of your video ads, counted at 95% completion. | Not available |
| Consideration | Increases Pin clicks or outbound clicks on your ad. | Maximum cost per click |
| Leads | Drives actions such as checkout, sign-up or add to cart on your website. | Target average cost per action |
| Sales | Helps people discover your products or services while they search Pinterest for inspiration. | Target average cost per action |
Ad formats
Pinterest's ad specs list several formats. The file rules for each one are on our Pinterest ad specs page.
- Standard image ads: one image. Pinterest recommends a 2:3 ratio, and taller Pins may be cut off in feeds.
- Video ads: standard width videos are the size of a regular Pin, while max. width videos expand across the whole feed on mobile and are paid-only.
- Carousel ads: several images that people swipe through.
- Collections ads: one main image above three smaller images, in feeds on mobile devices.
- Shopping ads: one image or video at a time, letting people buy products they find on Pinterest.
- Idea, Showcase and Quiz ads: richer formats with several videos and images, swipeable cards, or multiple-choice questions.
Targeting
Interest targeting reaches people based on their interests, tastes and life events. Keyword targeting reaches people as they search for a specific idea, with broad, phrase and exact match and negative keywords. Location targeting can use countries, regions, metro areas or postal codes, and Ads Manager starts with your business's country.
- Keywords: up to 20,000 per ad group, and Pinterest recommends at least 25 for the best results.
- Türkiye: Pinterest's table shows country, region and postal code targeting for Türkiye, but not metro areas.
- Sensitive categories: you cannot target by health conditions, ethnic origin, religious beliefs, political opinions or similar sensitive traits.
- Age: you cannot target ads to people under 18.
Budget and bidding
What you pay depends on the budget and spend limits you set for your campaigns. With Performance+, Pinterest manages your bids. With custom bidding you set a maximum cost per thousand impressions, a maximum cost per click or a target average cost per action, depending on the objective. Ads Manager shows the amounts that apply to your account.
Measurement: Pinterest tag and Conversions API
The Pinterest tag is code you add to your website. It tracks visitors and the actions they take after seeing your ad, so you can track and optimise conversions, measure campaigns and build audiences. Each ad account needs its own tag and audiences, and a new tag can take up to 24 hours to show in Ads Manager.
The Pinterest Conversions API sends web, in-app and offline conversions from your server. Pinterest asks for data in real time, within an hour, and for deduplicated events when you also use the tag. Anyone with a business account can use it with a token created on the Conversions page in Ads Manager.
Ad review and common rejections
Once you launch a campaign, Pinterest reviews it against its advertising guidelines, which can take up to 24 hours. If something goes against the guidelines, Ads Manager tells you what to change so the ad can be reviewed again. The guidelines rule out, among other things:
- Blurry or grainy images, text too small to read, and poorly edited or cropped images.
- Images with fake play or download buttons, or elements that mimic Pinterest features.
- Poor grammar or spelling, and excessive capitals or symbols.
- Landing pages that require sign-up before showing content, show pop-up ads or start automatic downloads.
- Sensational clickbait that plays on fear or withholds information.
Pinterest says it is updating its advertising guidelines with effect from 12 November 2026, so read the current version before you launch.
Running Pinterest campaigns with Mecrio
- You connect Pinterest through its own sign-in screen. Mecrio lists the ad accounts your business account can use, including ones another business has shared with you.
- In Türkiye the ad account is opened through Pinterest's advertising partner. Once your business account can access it, it appears in Mecrio when you connect Pinterest.
- Mecrio first creates the Pin from your image, video or carousel, title, description and link. It then creates the campaign, ad group and ad, all paused in your own ad account, so nothing spends until you start it.
- The Pin is saved to a protected board used only for ads, so it does not appear among your public boards.
- Before anything is created, Mecrio flags regions and postal codes mixed in one ad group and carousel cards with different shapes. It offers only the bidding methods your objective allows.
- Later you can change the budget, dates, audience, bid, link and button from Mecrio. The Pin's own text and visuals are changed in Pinterest's Ads Manager. Mecrio takes no cut of your ad spend.