Creators and brands are looking to sell additional goods and use Pinterest as a demand aggregator. Remember how the Pinterest Factory tags all of the images and videos with metadata? That’s how the company grows its users and, subsequently, usage. Whenever someone searches for something on Google, Pinterest’s goal is that their images appear at the top of the results. It’s a self-reinforcing growth loop.

Charge for access (SaaS)
Charge for usage (Amazon Web Services)
Charge for eyeballs (Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest)

Pinterest should be the perfect platform for ads since people are on there explicitly to find goods. Despite that theoretical fit, Pinterest’s monetization has been abysmal.

The most lucrative/performative ad to sell is one that appears right when a user has the intent to buy.

Pinterest isn’t in the best spot for this value proposition. Their specific use case is discovery, not purchasing.

Pinterest isn’t a shopping destination––it’s a window-shopping experience. The difference between doing this flow and doing it with a broader search bar like Google is the engagement modality.