Why this step matters

The Pinterest tag is the piece of code that connects your store to the ad account. We sum it up this way in our video on the Conversions objective: if Pinterest knows how many visits, add-to-carts and purchases your site produces, it can optimize; if it does not know, it cannot optimize anything at all. Campaign objective, reading results, budget: everything depends on this starting point.

Our 2021 video on installing through an app insists on the consequence of a badly placed tag: you receive bad data and misread it, until you conclude that Pinterest is not profitable for you when it is the measurement that is wrong. On the accounts we manage, this is the first thing we check before touching a campaign, and it is often where the explanation for a "Pinterest test that did not work" lies.

Since 2022, installation on Shopify goes through the Pinterest app published by Pinterest itself. We show it in the video below: once the app is connected, the tag is in place and the product catalog is synced, without touching the theme code. In a more recent conversation with Alexandre, from Pinterest, the point is confirmed for the Conversions API: on Shopify, the app installs it directly. The interface has changed since filming; the logic has not. What gets skipped most often are the checks that every one of our videos repeats: Tag Helper, add-to-cart simulation, sale simulation, comparison with the store's figures.

Install the Pinterest tag on Shopify with the official app (2022)

1. 1

   Check that the account is a Business account and claim the website

   Open Pinterest and check that the Ads menu is present at the top of the page. As our video on the other platforms points out, a personal account converts to a business account from the account settings.

   Then claim your domain: Settings, then Claim, then Websites. On Shopify, the Pinterest app usually takes care of this when you connect; otherwise, the HTML tag provided by Pinterest goes into the head section of the theme.liquid file, as we do in our video on manual installation. To be clear, claiming is not enough: it proves the site belongs to you, it installs nothing.

2. 2

   Install the Pinterest app from the Shopify App Store

   From the Shopify admin, open Apps and search for "Pinterest". Install the app published by Pinterest, not a third-party app. The main video shows it: you click Add app while logged in to the store.

3. 3

   Connect the Pinterest account and authorize access

   Before clicking the connect button, log in to the right Pinterest account in the same browser. One detail matters here: you need both windows open, Shopify and Pinterest, on the account you want to link. Click Connect Pinterest account, then Authorize access in the window that opens.

   Back in the app, as the video shows, the tag is installed and the catalog synced. In the current version of the app, the settings page also shows the status of conversion tracking, which covers the tag and the Conversions API: check that it is active, and that the selected ad account is the one you are going to run your campaigns on.

4. 4

   Install the Pinterest Tag Helper and verify the Page Visit event

   Install the Pinterest Tag Helper extension on Chrome, then open your store in a new tab. We show it in the main video: the extension detects right away whether the tag is present. You should see your tag ID and a pagevisit event as early as the home page.

   Two things to check: the ID, which must be the one displayed under Ads, then Conversions; and the number of tags, because two IDs, or the same one twice, signal a double installation to remove.

5. 5

   Verify the Add to Cart event with a simulation

   On a product page, add an item to the cart with the extension open. We do this in each of our installation videos: an add-to-cart simulation is enough to make the event appear. You should see an addtocart event with, in its parameters, the value, the currency and the quantity.

   These parameters matter: our video on manual installation explains that an event with hard-coded values sends wrong amounts as soon as the price changes. The app passes these variables on its own.

6. 6

   Verify the Checkout event with a test order

   This is the event a campaign with the Conversions objective optimizes on. In the main video, we recommend running a sale simulation if you can. On Shopify, there are two ways to place an order without taking any money: Shopify Payments test mode, under Settings, then Payments, or a 100% discount code reserved for your own use. Go all the way to the confirmation page with the extension open, and check that a checkout event appears with the order's value and currency. Then cancel the test order in Shopify.

7. 7

   Read the event history in Ads Manager

   Open Pinterest, then Ads, then Conversions. We walk through this screen in our video on the Conversions objective. Look first at the date and time of the most recent event: they must match your tests. One trap to know about: the time displayed is in UTC, not your local time.

   Then click Event history. You should see your three event types with consistent volumes: many visits, fewer add-to-carts, even fewer checkouts. On the account shown on screen in that video, the add-to-carts and purchases of the last few days are compared with the store's figures. On the accounts we manage, a gap of a few units is normal; a gap of an order of magnitude signals a problem.

   If the Conversions API is active, this screen separates events received through the tag and through the API. Alexandre, from Pinterest, explains it to us: Pinterest deduplicates, and a purchase seen by both counts once. On our accounts, the API generally reports more than the tag alone.

8. 8

   Check automatic Enhanced match

   Still under Ads, then Conversions, check that automatic Enhanced match is turned on. It is the first thing we look at in our video on the greyed-out objective. Alexandre gives the principle: when a visitor refuses cookies, Pinterest can still match the purchase to a profile from the information passed along, within the attribution window. On Shopify, the app turns it on by default in principle; check rather than assume.

9. 9

   Wait 48 to 72 hours before drawing conclusions about the Conversions objective

   If the Conversions objective appears greyed out when you create a campaign, it is not a failure. We explain it in the video below: Pinterest waits until it has seen a complete purchase path, visit, add-to-cart, checkout, in sufficient numbers. The usual benchmarks: at least two or three add-to-carts and two or three purchases visible in the event history, then a 48 to 72 hour wait.

   Why the Conversions objective stays greyed out and how to unlock it (2022)

   If your store has no traffic yet, your test orders serve this purpose too. As a last resort, the video mentions a traffic campaign to generate the first events, while making clear that we do not recommend it at the start. On the accounts we manage, waiting is almost always enough; otherwise, an earlier check was skipped.

What usually goes wrong

• The tag is installed twice. An old manual installation or a third-party app stays in place when the official app is connected: every event goes out in duplicate. The rule, set from our very first videos: one method only, the app first.
• The purchase event fires everywhere. In our video on Wix and PrestaShop, we show what happens when the checkout code is placed on every page instead of the confirmation page alone: Pinterest detects a sale on every visit. On Shopify, this case comes back as soon as you add code by hand.
• The base code is there, but not the events. This is the scenario described in our video on manual installation: the base code follows visitors, but without the event codes, no add-to-cart and no purchase gets through.
• The purchase is not reported, or stops being reported. A script left in a location Shopify has retired, a changed theme, an app reconnected to another account. It is best to come back a few days after installation to compare Pinterest's counters with the store's; we repeat this check every time the theme changes.
• Concluding too quickly that the objective is blocked. The events are there, but only for a few hours. Allow 48 to 72 hours, and check the UTC time before believing an event is missing.
• Pinterest traffic is under-measured, and the tag gets the blame. Alexandre explains to us that some users leave Pinterest's in-app browser, and that purchases made on another device escape last-click. The tag works; it is attribution that has its limits.

On WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Wix or through Google Tag Manager

We devoted a whole video to these platforms. The principle stays the same: a single base code, events verified in the Tag Helper and in the history.

WooCommerce. There is a free Pinterest extension for WooCommerce, developed with Pinterest. We recommend it: it installs the tag and syncs the catalog, like the Shopify app.

PrestaShop. No free official extension. Our video mentions a paid module dedicated to the Pinterest tag and a multi-platform pixel management module. Failing that, base code in the theme header and event codes page by page, with the dynamic variables from the Pinterest documentation.

Wix. From the site settings, Custom code section, paste the base code on all pages, in the header, and give it a clear name. The purchase code, on the other hand, goes only on the order confirmation page.

Google Tag Manager. This is the method we prefer for anything that is not Shopify or WooCommerce, as long as a GTM container already exists: a Pinterest template is available in the GTM gallery, including for the server side. The setup resembles Meta's, with a few subtleties.

Why this step matters

A brand-new ad account has no data. Pinterest does not yet know who buys from you, how long those people stay on your site or which pins they save. It finds out by testing pockets of audience one after another, and that testing takes time: in the video below, published in June 2025, we put the learning phase of a new account at seven to ten days on average. On Meta you get feedback within the day; on Pinterest, it is a question of time before it is a question of budget.

Most of the failed launches we see are not Pinterest failures but transfer errors. In a LinkedIn post of December 17, 2025, we listed the Meta reflexes a brand applies without thinking: cutting a campaign after three days because ROAS is low, reusing its impulse-buy videos, raising the budget sharply as soon as something works, judging performance on a one-day attribution window. The conclusion comes fast: "Pinterest doesn't convert, we're stopping." The account was simply still learning.

What this phase produces when you let it run its course, we describe in a September 2024 video on campaign structure: a 70 to 80% drop in performance during learning, normal at that stage, then a stabilization, then plateaus validated one by one. In a large advertiser's account of its own experience, which we relayed in April 2026, cost per action had fallen 40% between the start and the end of learning. These are observations, not a rule; the conclusion is the same: a three-day read has no value.

New Pinterest Ads account: what to do and what not to do at launch (June 2025)

1. 1

   Day 0: check that the Conversions objective is available

   Open Ads › Conversions: automatic enhanced match turned on, last event dated today. In Event history, compare add-to-carts and checkouts over three days with your back office; the orders of magnitude should line up. Timestamps are in UTC.

   If the Conversions objective is greyed out when you create a campaign, Pinterest has not yet seen enough add-to-carts and purchases come through the tag. Our 2022 video on this question advises waiting 48 to 72 hours after the first events, and advises against a traffic campaign "to unlock it", except as a last resort.

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2. 2

   Day 0: choose Conversions, turn off Performance+, optimize for Checkout

   Create a manual campaign with the Conversions objective. Not "Awareness" and not "Consideration": those objectives optimize toward impressions or clicks. The June 2025 video points it out: Pinterest account managers often recommend them at the start, promising that conversions will follow. On our accounts, they do not follow: the account learns to find clickers.

   Below the objectives, a purple Performance+ banner is checked by default. Uncheck it: Performance+ lets Pinterest choose the audiences, and with no data it scatters the budget. We save it for scaling the budget, once the account already knows its audiences and its creatives; that is the subject of the next tutorial.

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   At ad group level, the optimization event is Checkout, not "Add to cart": the purchase is what you want to teach Pinterest.

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3. 3

   Day 0: one campaign for interests, one for keywords

   Do not start on broad targeting with no guidance: on a new account, broad stretches the learning phase, because Pinterest tests pockets of audience that are very far apart. Guide it with top-level interests ("Home decor", for example) and keywords.

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   Keep the two apart: one campaign for interests, another for keywords. Mixed in a single ad group, the budget goes to interests in the vast majority of cases (around 95% in our readings), the larger pockets, and you will never know what the keywords would have done. That is the "interests vs keywords" architecture from our December 2025 post.

   For a keyword campaign targeting France, the rule given in our November 2023 video: at least ten keywords and an estimated audience above 100,000. Expanded targeting unchecked, language "French", placements left as they are. Name each campaign so it reads clearly ("Test – interests – product A").

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4. 4

   Day 0: set a daily budget you can hold for ten days, and an automatic bid

   The budget is worked out backwards: what you are willing to spend over ten days with no result, divided by ten. Our July 2023 video puts the rule this way: better €10 a day for ten days than €50 a day for three days followed by a cut. The amount depends on the average order value: below an €80 average order value, €5 to €10 per day is enough; around €500, count on €30 to €50 per day, otherwise Pinterest sees add-to-carts but too few purchases to learn from. On the accounts we manage, including the largest, we always start small relative to the overall budget.

   Set a fixed daily budget and leave the bid on automatic: a custom bid with a target cost per purchase set too low stops Pinterest from spending, and therefore from learning.

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5. 5

   Day 0: load three to five pins per ad group

   Select between three and five pins per ad group, four being the usual benchmark; beyond that, performance drops on our accounts. Mix still image and video: on day ten you will know which of the two formats your account prefers. Vertical format (2/3 or 9/16 ratio), no squares. Check each pin in the mobile preview before publishing.

6. 6

   Days 1–3: check delivery, read nothing else

   For three days, you look at three things only: ads approved, daily budget spent, tag events still coming in. If any of the three is missing, it is a technical problem to fix right away. Otherwise, close Ads Manager.

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   Do not read ROAS. Our November 2023 video advises not opening the results before two or three days. In our December 2025 post, cutting on day three is the first mistake listed, and touching an ad too early is money gone: the spend fed the learning, and editing the campaign resets the counter to zero.

7. 7

   Days 4–7: read the intermediate signals, add retargeting

   From day four, you read, still without acting on acquisition. In Ads › Reports, build the simple table we recommend for a first test: spend, impressions, CPM, click-through rate, add-to-carts, checkouts, cost per add-to-cart and cost per purchase.

   Go down to ad group level to see where the budget goes: this is where the interests / keywords split pays off, because you see which campaign spends and which one produces add-to-carts. Add the Frequency column: in acquisition, we do not go above 3.

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   Check the attribution window. A one-day window only shows purchases made on the day of the view, whereas many users save the pin and come back later; our July 2023 video shows, on one account, attributed sales more than doubling between a one-day read and a seven-day read. Read on seven days at a minimum.

   Around day five, create a retargeting campaign: Conversions objective, ad group on Reconnect with users, site visitors over thirty days and people who engaged with your pins. It is the only campaign added during the ten days.

8. 8

   Days 8–10: prepare the decision without making it

   Sort ads by total checkout value rather than click-through rate: in the September 2024 video, we show pins with a lower CTR that generate more sales than the ones that click best. Look at the sales trend over the period rather than a single day; a two-day dip is not a conclusion, and we wait until the weekend has passed before drawing anything from it.

   Write down what you will do on day 10, without doing it yet: which campaign spends, which format comes out on top, which pin produced nothing despite normal spend. That last one gets replaced, not simply switched off: the algorithm always needs something left to test.

9. 9

   Day 10: decide, then move up in steps

   Three situations come up, as a rule.

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   Purchases are coming in and cost per purchase fits within your break-even point. Raise the budget in small steps and let each step settle. We describe this step-by-step climb in the video below and point out that the algorithm handles jolts poorly; the sharp increase is on the list of Meta reflexes to drop.

   Clicks and add-to-carts, few or no purchases. The site is not closing the sale, or the read window is too short. Check the seven-day read, let retargeting run, test the landing page (product versus collection) in a separate campaign. Do not cut acquisition.

   Almost no spend, or impressions with no clicks. That is a setting, not the market: custom bid too low, keyword audience too narrow, creative that does not fit. Fix one element at a time.

   Pinterest campaign structure and day-to-day management (September 2024)

   What you keep are the campaigns that have started learning: we call them always-on campaigns; they run all year with pin and keyword rotations at a measured pace.

What usually goes wrong

• The campaign is cut on day three. The mistake at the top of our list: the account was learning, the spend is lost and the next one starts from zero.
• The objective is "Consideration" because someone recommended it. Lots of clicks, no purchases.
• Performance+ stayed checked. The budget goes to audiences Pinterest does not know yet; learning takes longer.
• Interests and keywords in the same ad group. The budget goes to interests; the keywords were never tested.
• A custom bid from day one. Target cost too low, Pinterest does not spend, and the conclusion is "it isn't delivering".

Why this step matters

After managing more than a hundred accounts and working with several hundred advertisers, we keep finding the same mistakes from one account to the next, at large retailers and DTC brands alike, across more than twenty niches, in France as well as in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. The list below covers the seven mistakes we ranked in February 2026, from the most common to the least common. They are settings any account can check in half an hour.

Almost all of them share the same origin: the advertiser brings Meta habits to Pinterest. Our post from December 2025 sums up the usual sequence. The brand pauses its campaigns after three days because ROAS is low, duplicates its impulse-buy videos, raises the budget sharply as soon as something works, judges performance on a one-day attribution window, then concludes that "Pinterest doesn't convert." Pinterest is not what fails; the test is what was poorly designed.

The underlying reason is the algorithm. Pinterest opened up to advertising well after Google and Meta, around 2018, and its engine takes longer to find the right pockets of audience and the creatives that work. From what we observe, the learning phase lasts five to ten days on average depending on the account, and performance often drops by 70 to 80% while the algorithm runs its tests. A test designed for Meta, where the trend shows in two or three days, ends before Pinterest has even started learning.

Top 7 Pinterest Ads mistakes to avoid in 2026

Do the full review before you change anything. Each step describes the symptom visible in Ads Manager, the cause as we observe it, then the fix. Then correct everything at once: the last section explains why.

1. 1

   Check that you did not judge your campaigns before day ten

   The symptom. The account history shows campaigns stopped after two or three days, with few or no conversions, then relaunched in another form. The budget was concentrated on a handful of days.

   The cause. This is the most common mistake we observe. On Meta, two or three days are enough to see a trend; on Pinterest, those same days fall right in the learning phase, when performance drops by 70 to 80%. We made this mistake ourselves when we started, in 2021: an ad would run for two days, no conversion would show up, we would stop it and launch another one. A product that does not convert in the first few days is not a product that will never work.

   The fix. Spread the test budget over at least ten days, without changing the total amount: instead of a large daily budget for three days, the same budget divided by ten over ten days. During that period, the only metric we looked at back in 2021 was click-through rate, then cost per add to cart. A low click-through rate after three days signals a creative that does not fit Pinterest, not a platform that does not convert.

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2. 2

   Check that your campaigns use the Conversions or Catalog sales objective

   The symptom. The campaigns run on the Traffic or Awareness objective. They bring in visits, sometimes a lot of them, and get judged on sales they were never designed to produce.

   The cause. On Meta, top-of-funnel campaigns make sense because cost is high there. On Pinterest, the cost gap between an awareness campaign and a conversion campaign is small; in February 2026 we were seeing clicks at roughly €0.10 to €0.15, versus about €1 on Google. There is no reason to buy unqualified traffic: you might as well give Pinterest a sales objective from the start.

   The fix. Move almost all your campaigns, around 90% on our accounts, to the Conversions objective, and to Catalog sales if you have more than thirty or forty products. If the Conversions objective is not available at creation, the checkout event is not firing yet: go back to the tag before going further.

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3. 3

   Check that your creatives were made for Pinterest, not recycled from Meta

   The symptom. One or two visuals per ad group, in square or horizontal format, with an impulse-buy angle and a soundtrack you need in order to understand the message. Click-through rate is low.

   The cause. Pinterest is a visual search engine: people come looking for inspiration with purchase intent, not to scroll a feed. Aggressive videos copied from Meta get rejected by the audience; what works is lifestyle creative. Videos start without sound, hence the need for captions. The audience is about 70% women according to the figures we quoted in 2026, which shapes the profiles to feature in UGC creatives.

   The fix. Remake your creatives in vertical format, with movement in the first seconds, a call to action at the end and captions. Test several formats: static, carousel, video. We recommend three to six creatives per ad group on standard campaigns, and up to ten or fifteen on Performance+ campaigns, which handle them better.

4. 4

   Check that Performance+ is neither missing nor alone on the account

   The symptom. Two opposite cases: either Performance+ has never been tested, or the account contains nothing but Performance+ campaigns, which started fast and then ran out of steam.

   The cause. Performance+ is Pinterest's equivalent of Google's Performance Max: an automated campaign whose learning phase is shorter than that of standard campaigns. On the accounts we manage, the observation is clear: standard campaigns help Performance+ campaigns and vice versa. An account running only Performance+ accelerates at the start and lasts less long; yet what you are after on Pinterest is longevity, not a peak followed by a decline.

   The fix. Test Performance+ on the Conversions or Catalog sales objective, alongside standard campaigns and not instead of them, with more creatives. The tutorial Performance+: when to enable it details the conditions.

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5. 5

   Check that your account structure is not a Meta structure

   The symptom. Two or three campaigns on campaign budget optimization (CBO), all the creatives in the same campaign, and budget changes as soon as the results move. After each change, sales drop, sometimes to zero.

   The cause. On Meta, you put everything in one campaign and the algorithm sorts it out. On Pinterest, the algorithm is very sensitive to budget changes: doubling a daily budget sends the campaign back into the learning phase. On the accounts we manage, the answer is structural: one campaign per keyword group, one per interest, one on Performance+, one per creative angle, one per demographic segment. On an account spending a few hundred euros a day, we have fifteen to twenty active campaigns on average, to spread the risk and keep campaigns from competing with each other.

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   The fix. Stop touching the budgets of campaigns that are running. To spend more, add campaigns and step up gradually. Scaling on Pinterest is horizontal: you duplicate what works onto other angles or other markets instead of multiplying one campaign's budget.

   Stop making these Pinterest Ads mistakes (June 2025)
6. 6

   Check that interests and keywords are not in the same ad group

   The symptom. Keywords have been entered, but spend goes almost entirely to interests. In some accounts, there is no keyword campaign at all.

   The cause. An interest such as home decor represents several million people; a keyword such as "sofa" in the same theme, a few hundred thousand searches. If Pinterest has the choice within one ad group, it takes the easy route and delivers to the broad audience. Keywords reach people with intent, who are easier to convert, but they get nothing.

   The fix. Separate them: interest campaigns on one side, keyword campaigns on the other. Test both, and check in the reports that spend on keywords is real.

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7. 7

   Check that you have tested several landing pages

   The symptom. Every campaign sends to the same product page. Click-through rate is fine, conversions are absent, and the conclusion drawn is that Pinterest does not convert.

   The cause. Sometimes the ad is good, the click-through rates too, and it is the page behind it that falls short. Users coming from Pinterest are engaged on the site: they scroll to the bottom of the page and browse several pages. They do not know you yet and need more education than a buyer coming from Meta. Since the traffic is cheap, testing several pages costs a few euros for hundreds of visits.

   The fix. Send the same creative to a product page, a collection page and, if you have one, an editorial or advertorial page. Watch on-site behavior with a session-recording tool to spot the section that blocks.

What usually goes wrong

Here are the correction mistakes we see most often on the accounts we manage.

• Fixing everything at once on active campaigns. Every significant change restarts learning. Make the fixes on new campaigns and let the old ones run long enough to compare.
• Doubling the budget of the campaign that works. This is the most frequent Meta reflex: the campaign goes back into learning and sales drop. Add a campaign instead.
• Cutting on day three, even after spreading the budget. The ten-day rule only holds if you keep it to the end.
• Switching the whole account to Performance+. Faster start, shorter lifespan. Keep standard campaigns alongside.
• Adjusting too much, or not at all. Running an account is a rhythm to keep: too many adjustments and performance drops, no adjustments and it drops too. Refreshing creatives and pages is something you schedule.
• Dropping Pinterest retargeting because Meta already does it. People arrive on Pinterest in a different frame of mind and retargeting plays its own role there; setting it up takes thirty minutes to an hour.
• Following the advice to mix interests and keywords. Even when it comes from a Pinterest contact, the outcome is the same: everything goes to interests.

Why this step matters

Performance+ rolled out to all advertiser accounts in September 2024. It is Pinterest's equivalent of Google's Performance Max, with one difference: it only serves on Pinterest, with no partner site network. In practice, the Performance+ checkbox hands the algorithm four decisions you used to make yourself: targeting (Pinterest expands beyond the keywords and interests you entered), bidding, budget (a Performance+ budget can go up on a good day and come back down on a slow one) and, for catalog campaigns, creative, through Performance+ creative, which generates backgrounds from your feed. The option is available on three objectives: Consideration, Conversions and Catalog sales.

We explain it in the video below: Pinterest built this feature so that more advertisers would launch a first campaign without getting stuck on targeting. It is not the miracle fix many people take it for. What we observe on the accounts we manage comes down to one sentence: Performance+ works with the data that already exists in the account. On a warm account, with campaigns that have been running for months and steady budgets, adding this layer brought CPMs and cost per purchase down, and therefore return on ad spend up. On a brand-new account with no history, performance can take off in the first few days and then fail to hold. And what you are after on Pinterest is stability.

At launch, Pinterest reported roughly 10% lower CPA and CPC compared with a classic setup. In 2026, an advertiser in France published a public write-up of their Performance+ test: a cost per action down 40% between the start and the end of the learning phase, with static formats turning out to be the best performers. These are dated observations, not a promise: they describe accounts that already had data to work with.

One last point, which we have been repeating since 2024: non-Performance+ campaigns feed Performance+ campaigns. The keywords and interests you test by hand enrich the signal the algorithm will use afterwards. So the order matters as much as the settings.

Should you enable Performance+ in your Pinterest campaigns in 2026?

1. 1

   Check that the account is ready

   Before opening Ads Manager, answer three questions. Is the "Checkout" event firing, with purchases attributed over the past thirty days? Do you have at least one manual conversion campaign running, set on the purchase? Does the account have several weeks of delivery history?

   If you answer no to any of these, Performance+ is not the priority. We say it plainly in the main video: on a brand-new account, it is not the ideal solution; what you want at the start is to test different keywords, interests and targeting types. Come back here once your manual campaigns have produced purchases.

2. 2

   Create the campaign and choose the objective

   In Ads Manager, click Create campaign and choose manual creation. Select the Conversions or Catalog sales objective. Both accept Performance+; so does Consideration, but we concentrate the budget on the bottom of the funnel, where Pinterest's costs per click are most favorable.

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   On the accounts we manage, catalog sales with Performance+ is what responded best. That observation goes back to October 2024, on one condition: a product feed with inspirational images, in Pinterest's universe, rather than packshots. If you have more than twenty products, this is the campaign to test first.

   Pinterest Performance+: first feedback after two months of testing
3. 3

   Check the Performance+ box and read what changes

   Under the objective, a Performance+ checkbox appears. Check it. From there, Ads Manager simplifies the ad group: targeting switches to automated mode, and so does bidding. You can still enter keywords or interests, but Pinterest treats them as hints, not as limits.

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   Make sure the "Performance+ targeting" label appears in the ad group summary before moving on: that is the point we check on screen in the main video.

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4. 4

   Optimize for Checkout, not for Add to cart

   This is the setting we call "super important" in the main video. For the conversion event to optimize for, choose Checkout (the final purchase). Not "Add to cart", not "Checkout initiated". With automated targeting, the algorithm looks for the profiles most likely to trigger the event you give it: give it the cart, and it will bring you carts.

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   On the accounts we manage, a Performance+ campaign set on Add to cart shows an attractive cost per event and a cost per purchase that is not.

5. 5

   Set the budget and let it breathe

   Set a daily budget you can hold for several weeks without touching it. If you enable Performance+ budget, Pinterest can raise that amount on a good day and lower it on another. That is useful on a warm account; on an account that has only just passed the readiness check, keep the budget fixed at first so you can read the results without an extra variable.

   Either way, do not change this budget during the learning phase. We showed it on an account in September 2024: campaign launched on the 3rd, first conversions on the 9th, performance built over about ten days. Pinterest's algorithm is slower than Meta's; every significant budget change sends it back into learning.

6. 6

   Keep the manual campaigns running alongside

   Performance+ does not replace your structure; it adds to it. It is advisable to test with and without, in parallel, because manual campaigns feed the automated ones. Keep:

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   • one interest campaign, with interests broad enough to exceed one million in potential audience on the French-speaking market;
   • one keyword campaign, with terms broad enough (above one hundred thousand in audience) for Pinterest to explore the variations itself;
   • one classic catalog campaign if you already have a Performance+ catalog campaign, for comparison;
   • your retargeting campaigns, on a logic of roughly 80% of budget in acquisition and 20% in retargeting.

   On Pinterest, you do not put all your creative into one broad campaign the way you would on Meta: you need granularity. We show it in the video on the settings that ruin campaigns: mixing interests and keywords in the same ad group sends the whole budget toward the broadest audience. Performance+ does not fix that mistake, it hides it.

   On the creative side, what we see matches the public write-up cited above: static, lifestyle formats hold up well under Performance+. Put at least four pieces of creative per ad group and keep control of their rotation.

7. 7

   Read the results after learning

   Wait for the end of the learning phase, about ten days at a minimum, before comparing. Open the campaign view over the past thirty days and put side by side, for the Performance+ campaign and your manual campaigns with the same objective: CPM, cost per outbound click, cost per purchase and return on ad spend.

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   What you are looking for is not a spike, it is a curve that holds. One point we insist on: a Performance+ campaign launched too early can post very good days and then deteriorate. Read cost per purchase week after week, not just the cumulative total. On a warm account, falling CPMs are the first sign that the layer is working, even before return on ad spend.

8. 8

   Decide: keep, cut, or wait

   Three situations, three decisions.

   The Performance+ campaign holds a cost per purchase at or below your best manual campaigns, over several weeks: keep it as your always-on campaign and duplicate it toward other audience pockets or other creative.

   It started well and then deteriorated, while the manual campaigns stayed stable: the account lacked data. Cut it without changing anything else, let the manual campaigns accumulate purchases for a few weeks, then launch a new Performance+ campaign.

   It never took off: check the optimization event (step 4) and the product feed before drawing conclusions about the option itself. On the accounts we manage, most cases of "Performance+ doesn't work" come down to one of those two causes.

What usually goes wrong

• Performance+ enabled on the account's very first campaign. This is the most common case, because the option is offered by default. Without history, the algorithm has nothing to work with; performance sometimes takes off, then drops back.
• Every campaign switched to Performance+ at the same time. No manual campaign is left to feed the signal, and no reference point is left to judge by.
• The optimization event left on "Add to cart". Cost per event looks good, cost per purchase does not follow.
• The budget edited every other day. Every significant change restarts learning, and on Pinterest learning takes longer than elsewhere.
• A catalog feed made of packshots on a white background. Performance+ creative generates backgrounds, it does not redo the visual.
• A verdict after three days. First conversions often arrive after a week; the curve is read over a month.

Why this step matters

On Pinterest, the fourth quarter is not decided in November. People looking for a gift idea start in September and save pins for weeks before they buy. We explain it in the video below, recorded in October 2025: on Pinterest Trends, the keyword "gift idea" ("idée cadeau" on the French Trends) climbs sharply from the first week of November and peaks on December 6. A campaign that starts mid-November arrives after the rise, not before.

Winning Q4 in e-commerce with Pinterest Ads (October 2025)

The second reason is the algorithm. On the accounts we manage, a campaign's learning phase lasts 7 to 10 days, up to 14 on some accounts. We have been repeating it since 2022: an advertiser who launches mid-November has a warm algorithm around November 25, too late to raise budgets for Black Friday week. That is why this tutorial's calendar exists: warm up the account in October so it is ready by mid-November.

The third reason is the cost of delivery. Our October 2025 video records, on an account we manage, a CPM of about €1.30 the week of November 20, 2024, €1.60 the following week and €1.68 on Black Friday itself, even though budgets had been raised. In November 2024, we placed Black Friday CPMs between €1.50 and €2; in October 2022, between €2.50 and €3. Over the same period, the Meta CPMs we cite come close to €15 (LinkedIn post, fall 2025). These are dated readings, not a promise: advertising competition rises little on Pinterest at year end, which is what makes anticipating worthwhile.

One last observation, and it shapes every step: acquisition creative must inspire, and the offer is reserved for retargeting. The observation is constant: an account that pushes promo codes to people who do not know it yet sees its CPMs climb. Q4 reads in two phases: inspire in October and early November, convert with an offer from Black Friday week onward.

1. 1

   Late September: check the foundations before spending

   Open Ads Manager and check three things: the "Checkout" event is showing under Conversions, the catalog is synced without a blocking error, and the Business profile is complete (logo, description, link to the site, banner, boards).

   The profile is not a detail. We say it again in the September 2026 video: a user who sees your promoted pin can click through to the site or open your profile. A profile with one board and a pin that is eight months old loses part of the paid traffic.

2. 2

   Early October: read the search calendar in Pinterest Trends

   Open Pinterest Trends, set the region to France and type your product keywords, then "gift idea" followed by your category. Compare two or three phrasings to spot the one with the most volume.

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   We use the tool in two ways: by positioning ourselves at the end of November of the previous year to see what was rising then, and by looking at the start date of each curve. In our November 2024 video, "Christmas table decor" starts on October 11 and peaks on December 21. In our August 2026 video on Pinterest SEO, Christmas-related searches start as early as September, with a sharp rise from October.

   The last quarter's search calendar on Pinterest (August 2026)

   For each keyword family, note the start week and the peak week: that calendar sets the launch date of your keyword campaigns, ahead of the rise.

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3. 3

   First half of October: launch acquisition on small budgets

   Create your first campaigns with the Conversions objective and the Checkout event. Not "Traffic", not "Awareness": as we explain in the September 2026 video, unlike Meta, the conversion objective is not more expensive to deliver on Pinterest.

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   The campaign structure to prepare for the last quarter (September 2026)

   Keep targeting separate: one campaign per keyword group, one campaign per interest. If you mix both in the same ad group, the spend goes to the interests and the keywords do not deliver. For interests, we aim for an audience above 1 million in France; for keywords, above 100,000. Stay on top-level interests in October.

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   On budget, start low: the usual benchmark is €5 to €20 per day per campaign at launch. With a CPM around €1, that is enough to reach several thousand people a day and let the algorithm learn.

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4. 4

   October: inspirational creative and open landing pages

   For acquisition, produce pins that show the product in use, with no offer and no promo code. Before producing anything, type "gift idea" followed by your sector into Pinterest search and look at which formats stand out. On the accounts we manage, home decor and fashion work mostly in static, collection or carousel; beauty and products that need a demonstration do better in video.

   For the destination, test collection pages or a multi-product "gift ideas" page rather than the product page alone: on our accounts, it often takes several touchpoints before the purchase. The product page remains the destination for retargeting and shopping.

5. 5

   Mid-October to early November: add shopping and dynamic retargeting

   If your catalog has more than about thirty products and the account is approved as a Verified Merchant, create a shopping campaign (objective Catalog sales) optimized for conversions. The pin shows price and availability and sends people to the product page. In our view, these are the campaigns best suited to the year-end season.

   Then create a dynamic retargeting campaign on the catalog: someone who viewed a product sees that same product again. This is the campaign that will carry the offers from Black Friday week onward. If you use a feed management tool, optimize catalog titles and visuals now: on our accounts, the difference shows mostly in retargeting.

   Finally, test a Performance+ campaign alongside the manual campaigns, not instead of them. We explain it in the November 2024 video: Performance+ works better on an account that is already warm, and an account that only has automated campaigns levels its results downward. The tutorial Performance+: when to enable it details the conditions.

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6. 6

   Mid-November: the account is warm, time to scale

   Around November 15, take stock: which campaigns have held their target for more than ten days, which creatives stand out, which targeting costs too much. That is what we call a "warm account", and only from that point do we increase.

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   On Pinterest, increases happen horizontally first. Rather than doubling the budget of a campaign that works, duplicate it and change one variable: keywords, interest, creative, landing page, product group for shopping. Doubling or tripling a budget, as you would on Meta, sends the campaign back into learning. Our accounts end the season with around twenty active campaigns, most of them on modest budgets.

   For vertical scaling, the rule is: under about ten euros a day, a 50% increase goes through; from €50 to €100 a day, no more than 20 to 30% at a time.

7. 7

   Black Friday week: the offer goes to retargeting, not acquisition

   Turn on your offer campaigns on the retargeting audiences: site visitors, add-to-carts that did not convert, people who engaged with your pins. The creative changes register: static, short message, promo code or free shipping clearly readable, social proof if you have it. This is where the Black Friday peak happens on the accounts we manage, because the audiences were built in October.

   Keep the acquisition campaigns running with their inspirational creative. Do not swap their visuals for the offer: that is the typical case where the CPM climbs. Bring the site in line (homepage banner, "gift ideas" page, current offer): the site has to follow the operations calendar, from Black Friday to Christmas.

8. 8

   December: switch to Christmas mode and hold on past the shipping deadline

   From the start of the month, move the acquisition creative to the Christmas universe and the keywords "Christmas gift", "gift box", "Christmas gift idea for her" or "for him", following the curves noted in October.

   Year-end strategy: Black Friday, Christmas and after (November 2024)

   Do not cut the campaigns at the shipping deadline. We explain it in the November 2024 video: many advertisers leave Pinterest at that point and, on our accounts, the period from December 20 to early January has worked very well with a "last-minute gift" angle, in pure acquisition. Gift cards, fast shipping or in-store pickup are the angles to push during those ten days, depending on what your logistics allow.

9. 9

   January: switch to the sales without starting from scratch

   Keep the always-on campaigns that hold their target: some campaigns have been running for more than twelve months on our accounts, and we have been saying since 2022 that the hardest part on Pinterest is the start-up phase. Cutting a campaign that works in January means paying for that learning again.

   Change the creative and the offers, not the structure. In a January 2026 LinkedIn post, we note from Pinterest's winter sales report that checkouts rise week after week in January, and that searches shift toward storage, self-care and Valentine's Day. Add keyword campaigns on those themes rather than editing December's.

   Our 2022 Q4 strategy: what has not changed since

What usually goes wrong

• The account starts mid-November. The mistake we cite in every one of our year-end videos since 2022: the algorithm becomes usable around November 25, too late to scale before Black Friday.
• Meta creative is recycled as is. Big offer, promo code from the first impression. On our accounts, those campaigns see their CPMs climb and their return on ad spend divided by two or three compared with creative designed for Pinterest.
• Keywords and interests sit in the same ad group. The spend goes to the interests, and the advertiser concludes that "keywords don't work".
• The budget is doubled on Black Friday. The campaign goes back into learning at the worst moment. The increase is prepared a week ahead, by duplication and in steps.
• Everything runs on Performance+. On a cold account, the automated campaign lacks signals; on a warm account, it plateaus when it is alone.
• Campaigns are cut at the shipping deadline. Most advertisers abandon the December 20 to early January window, yet we have seen some of our best acquisition campaigns there.