Pinterest Shopping Ads and Catalog Management

Pinterest catalog requirements and feed fields

To create a catalog, Pinterest requires a business account, a website with verified ownership and an installed Pinterest tag. The fourth condition is the one that usually causes problems on ecommerce sites in Türkiye: under the merchant guidelines, contact details and shipping and return policies must be easy to find. If this information isn't in the site's footer, or exists only inside the distance sales agreement, approval can be delayed.

• Required fields: id, title, description, link, image_link, price, availability
• For products with variants (size, color), item_group_id is also required
• A single catalog can process up to 20 million products
• Hosted sources are read daily; manually uploaded files are processed on each upload
• If product video will be used, the video_link field is filled in the feed

Using your Google Merchant Center feed on Pinterest

Because the field names largely overlap, it usually can. Still, a feed built for Google doesn't always look good in the Pinterest feed. Google favors product photos on white backgrounds, while in the Pinterest feed images showing the product in use stand out; where possible, we add lifestyle photos to the additional image fields. We also simplify long, Google-specific keyword strings in titles.

We check three more things in the feed: that TL prices are sent with the correct currency code, that sale prices are supplied in a separate field, and that out-of-stock products switch to 'out of stock' without delay. When we also manage the same feed for Google Shopping campaigns and Meta catalog ads, we fix errors in one place.

Product groups and dynamic retargeting on Pinterest

According to Pinterest, sales campaigns don't require keyword or interest targeting; the system matches products with relevant users. The lever in our hands is product groups. We split groups by profit margin, season and best sellers, and give each group its own budget and bid. When 'All products' stays in a single group, spend tends to concentrate on cheap, frequently clicked products.

With dynamic retargeting, we can show users who visited the site or abandoned their cart the products they viewed. For this to work, the Pinterest tag must send the product ID in exactly the same format as the id in the catalog. When installing the tag with Google Tag Manager, we test this match and compare sales data with GA4.

Where Pinterest Shopping ads appear

We can't choose which surface Shopping ads appear on; Pinterest states this clearly. Product pins appear in the home feed, in search and in related pins, wherever Pinterest sees fit. That's why we read placement reports but do the optimization on product groups, bids and images. Once the catalog is running smoothly and weekly conversion volume has grown, we consider connecting the same catalog to a Performance+ campaign.

Shopping Ads: when do we recommend it?

How we manage Shopping Ads

1. Merchant guidelines checkWe check that contact, shipping and return pages are visible and that the site is verified.
2. Feed adaptationWe simplify the Merchant Center feed for Pinterest and add lifestyle images to the additional image field.
3. Tag and product IDWe test that the product ID sent by the Pinterest tag matches the catalog exactly.
4. Margin and season groupsWe split groups by margin, season and sales performance and assign separate budgets.
5. RetargetingWe set up visitor and cart abandonment audiences in separate ad groups.
6. Feed error trackingWe fix rejected products in the catalog diagnostics screen every week.

Shopping Ads: metrics and requirements

The Brand Move Pinterest Team

To learn more about Shopping Ads or other Pinterest ad formats, contact The Brand Move Pinterest team today.

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