Pinterest has announced a new ad deal with Google as the company aims to increase its ad revenue. Google is the social platform’s second third-party ad partner, after Amazon signed a multi-year deal with Pinterest last year.
The company talked about the Google partnership during its Q4 2023 earnings call, where it posted results below analysts’ expectations. Pinterest’s revenue for the period was $981 million, up 12% year over year. While monthly active users jumped to 498 million with 11% year-over-year growth.
Pinterest’s stock fell nearly 28% on revenue that fell short of expectations, but rebounded after CEO Bill Ready announced the deal with Google. He said the company started rolling out the new ad integration a few weeks ago and is already seeing positive results.
“This partnership will focus on monetizing many of our currently unmonetized international markets by enabling ads to be served on Pinterest through Google Ads Manager. We went live a few weeks ago, and it’s starting to pick up. Demand for third-party ads is scaling as we expected,” he said.
Ready noted that Pinterest has 80% of its users outside the US, but they account for only 20% of revenue. He said Google’s partnership will help increase average revenue per user in international markets.
Growing audience
Pinterest’s CEO talked about leveraging artificial intelligence and new formats to build user base and engagement. He said the company has rolled out the collage feature, which lets users use stickers and objects to create a new image, to all iOS users worldwide. The company said 75% of colleges have a shoppable product pin, but didn’t say anything about conversion figures.
Last year, the company also rolled out an auto-organization feature for users, which recognizes similar pins and prompts users to create boards. The feature led to a 30% increase in boards created on the social media platform.
Ready also said the company’s AI-powered search guides help users refine their queries and bring them closer to the “point of action or purchase.”
Last November, Pinterest began experimenting with a new tool to integrate body type ranges into search to make results more inclusive.
