How much does it cost to advertise on Pinterest?

Pinterest is no longer just a place to find inspiration. Users now come to the platform ready to act on ideas already in mind. The company created a diverse set of tools to help users with that, empowering advertisers to engage with these customers in innovative ways.

These tools, such as the new Lens feature, allow users to find anything they’re looking for with a quick snap from their camera. They can immediately search for and add the product to a shopping cart inside Pinterest with just a few clicks.

You can take advantage of this and other features through ads on Pinterest. But how much does Pinterest advertising cost? Keep reading to get all the answers you need to start planning your Pinterest’s campaign budget.

Pinterest advertising cost

Brands can advertise through Pinterest Promoted Pins. There are three different campaign types to choose from — building awareness, boosting engagement and driving website traffic. Each one is billed differently.

Awareness. Campaigns focused on building awareness are based on a standard cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM), which means the advertiser is charged for every 1,000 impressions of a pin.

Engagement. Pinterest charges the advertiser for every engagement (CPE) on a Promoted Pin, such as a repin or click.

Website traffic. When the goal is driving website traffic, Pinterest charges for clicks to a website (CPC). An important note on this campaign type is that advertisers are only charged when users click to acess your website directly from the promoted pin. There is no charge for clicks from a repinned pin. Those clicks are marked as downstream or promoted traffic and are highlighted in the campaign report.

Bidding and budgeting on Pinterest

For each of the campaigns listed above, Pinterest requires that you specify the maximum bid you want to pay for the action you’ve chosen — maximum CPC, maximum CPE and maximum CPM.

The minimum bids for Pinterest are fairly low, but vary according to your campaign type and currency of choice.

USD: $0.10 (CPC)/ $0.10 (CPE)/ $5.00 (CPM)
GBP: £0.08 (CPC)/ £0.08 (CPE)/ £4.00 (CPM)
CAD: $0.15 (CPC)/ $0.15 (CPE)/ $7.50 (CPM)
EUR: €0.11 (CPC)/ €0.11 (CPE)/ €5.50 (CPM)
AUD: $0.15 (CPC)/ $0.15 (CPE)/ $7.50 (CPM)
NZD: $0.16 (CPC)/ $0.16 (CPE)/ $8.00 (CPM)

Pinterest recommends starting your bids at a bit of a more aggressive rate to boost performance right out of the gate. These values can be changed and optimized later, according to your performance.

Your budget is set at a daily amount and is averaged throughout each day for the duration of your campaign. It can also be edited based on performance. Keep in mind that any time you change your maximum bid or budget, it will take 24 hours for these changes to be reflected in your performance reports.

Optimizing your Pinterest ads

With Pinterest, you select the terms you’d like to bid on and your traffic targeting. The platform then targets your pin across Pinterest based on those terms.

As with other social media platforms, the level of competitiveness for the terms you’ve selected will have an effect on your Pinterest advertising cost and campaigns.

One key point Pinterest makes is thinking in terms of the consumer. When promoting a pin about watches, you shouldn’t only choose terms such as “watches for men” or “watches for women.” Other useful terms to target could be “gifts for him/her,” “men’s/women’s fashion” or “fall fashion.”

Pinning straight to the top

All in all, having better creative, better targeting and better performance than competitors will make traffic more efficient for your campaign and drive your costs down. It’s time to take advantage of this mobile marketplace!

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by Taylor Schaller