Pinterest puts ads inside visual search for 619m users

What Visual Search Ads do and how they work

The format is built around a specific moment: a user points a camera at a sofa, taps a Pin of a kitchen splashback, or stops mid-swipe to zoom in on a dress. Pinterest's new Visual Search Ads place paid placements directly inside those visual search results and Pin closeups, pairing keyword relevance with visual search intent rather than waiting for a typed query.^[1] Google and Meta do not currently sell that moment at equivalent scale: the instant someone identifies an object they want, before they have put words to it.

The format supports lower-funnel objectives and works alongside Pinterest Performance+, the platform's existing suite of AI-powered buying tools.^[1] Chief Executive Officer Bill Ready said the underlying technology makes the placement possible. "Powered by Pinterest Intelligence, our AI-enabled visual understanding of images, products, taste and intent, we make those signals actionable for advertisers through visual search," Ready said.^[1]

Pinterest users conduct more than 80 billion searches per month, the majority visual, with over half carrying commercial intent, according to the company's own release.^[1] That figure comes from Pinterest itself and has not been independently verified, but it frames the pitch to advertisers: the query volume is already there, the intent is already commercial, and the placement is now for sale.

"Traditional search advertising has long relied on keywords, but in an AI-driven world, people are expressing themselves in much richer ways. Visual Search Ads allow marketers to tap into this new and rapidly growing form of AI-powered search with a prominent placement at the critical decision points where people see, save and decide," Ready said.^[1]

The rest of the new ad suite

Visual Search Ads arrived alongside a broader set of tools announced at Pinterest Presents, the platform's annual advertiser event held on 17 September 2026. Priority Products, self-serve A/B testing (which lets advertisers run creative experiments without calling a sales rep), and App Promotion, a beta objective designed for app install campaigns, were all part of the package.^[1]

Two consumer-facing features also debuted. Restyle, which lets users visually reimagine a Pin in a different aesthetic, entered beta in the United States and Canada only. The Bring My Pinterest to Life connected television (CTV) series, which turns user boards into shoppable content, was announced for broader markets, and Australian advertisers get access to the performance tools but will have to wait on Restyle.^[1]

What it means for Australian retail and home brands

The beta rolls out to all Pinterest ad markets in coming weeks, Australia included.^[1] The local audience is meaningful for retail and home categories. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) recorded 6,064,027 average monthly active Pinterest users in Australia in 2022, in its Digital Platform Services Inquiry Interim Report No. 6.^[2] That figure is now four years old, and global user growth since then suggests the local number has moved.

Globally, Pinterest reached 619 million monthly active users by 31 December 2025, according to its proxy statement filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in April 2026.^[3] That compares with 553 million at the end of Q4 2024, an 11 per cent year-on-year rise that also produced Pinterest's first billion-dollar revenue quarter.^[4] Ready said at the time: "2024 was a banner year for Pinterest, capped off by a milestone Q4, achieving the company's first billion-dollar revenue quarter and a record 553 million monthly active users."^[4]

Pinterest grew its user base fast enough to post a billion-dollar quarter, then immediately went to advertisers with a format that monetises the search behaviour driving that growth. For Australian brands in home, fashion and beauty, categories that over-index on Pinterest, the beta eligibility window opens in the coming weeks.