When marketers discuss social platform performance, Pinterest stands out as a powerful, high-performing channel. At Measured, we’ve seen the impressive results firsthand: For many brands and verticals, Pinterest can deliver exceptional outcomes, especially when compared to other view-based social channels.
Our latest 12-month data, pulled from more than 70 incrementality tests for Pinterest and causal Media Mix Modeling (MMM), paints a consistent picture: Pinterest has been outperforming other view-based social platforms in incremental ROAS, and not by a small margin. There is a meaningful opportunity for brands to align their budgets with Pinterest’s proven performance.
That opportunity has only grown more pronounced in 2026. Pinterest reported its first-ever billion-dollar quarter in Q1 2026, $1.008B in revenue, up 18% year-over-year, alongside 631 million monthly active users and ten consecutive quarters of double-digit user growth. The platform's continued investment in AI-powered ad products and visual search is making the performance gap between Pinterest and other view-based social channels even harder to ignore.
The Data Behind the Trend
Over the past year, we’ve observed a wide spread in ROAS(i) test results across all platforms. That’s not surprising. Incrementality testing always reveals variation depending on campaign structure, audience, creative, and spend levels. But when you zoom out and bucket performance by platform, the trendlines become clearer.
The following graph is based on 550 geo tests overall across the Measured portfolio of brands, with 70 tests specifically for Pinterest:
We grouped platforms into "view-based social" categories and compared their average ROAS(i) across thousands of experiments and campaign observations over the past 12 months. Here’s what stood out:
- Pinterest consistently ranks at the top among view-based social platforms, beating out other platforms in average ROAS(i).
- This performance is reflected not only in individual incrementality tests, but also in MMMs across the Measured portfolio of brands.
- With this proven outperformance, advertisers stand to benefit from increasing the share of budget allocated to Pinterest.
Why Is Pinterest Outperforming?
Pinterest offers a unique proposition in the social landscape. It's a place where users often go to plan and discover, and that purchase mindset may lead to higher downstream conversion rates, especially when paired with native formats that align well with user behavior.
Some additional factors that may be contributing to Pinterest’s strong performance:
- High-intent environment: Pinterest users are actively searching for inspiration tied to life events, seasonal moments, and specific product categories — meaning ads are often welcomed, not skipped. This is closer to the dynamic of paid search than feed-based social, which is why it tends to show up so strongly in incrementality testing.
- Longer consideration cycles: Pinterest content has a longer shelf life than ephemeral content on TikTok or Instagram Stories, which means more opportunities for influence over time.
- Improved measurement and targeting tools: Pinterest has made meaningful advances in its ad tech stack, helping advertisers better target and measure performance in recent quarters.
- Commercial intent at search scale: Pinterest now processes roughly 80 billion monthly visual searches, and the platform's positioning has shifted from "social discovery" to "visual product search." Unlike feed-based platforms where ads interrupt browsing, Pinterest ads often align with what users are actively looking to buy.
Why Pinterest is Undervalued
Despite its performance, Pinterest is often under-allocated in media plans. Why?
- Perception lag: It’s still viewed by some as a niche or secondary platform, especially outside of categories like CPG, retail, and home décor.
- Less hype, fewer headlines: Pinterest doesn’t make the kind of splashy headlines that drive experimental budgets the way TikTok or Snap might.
- Misalignment with short-term performance culture: Pinterest’s strength is in influencing consideration and purchase over a slightly longer time horizon, often undervalued in last-click attribution models, shorter attribution windows, or short-flight campaigns.
That’s exactly why incrementality testing and triangulated measurement matter most. Platforms like Pinterest, which don’t always shine in click-based metrics, often prove their value when you measure what actually moves the business.
Best Practices: What Recent Tests Are Teaching Us
We’ve seen some really clear takeaways from recent tests across the Measured client base. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Traditional Pinterest campaigns have been performing well. These make up the majority of spend across our test data. Make sure to diversify your strategy on Pinterest across multiple bid types and ad formats. Keep audiences broad for prospecting and aim to reach users 1-2x per week.
- Performance+ can be included in campaign strategy, but be wary of running P+ campaigns alongside traditional campaigns in the same stage of the funnel.
- In cases where overlap between P+ and standard campaigns exceeds 20-30%, the Pinterest team saw poor incrementality results as P+ doesn’t access fundamentally different inventory or audiences.
- To test P+ performance against traditional campaigns while running with Measured, set up as an independent A/B test with your Pinterest account team to reduce cannibalization of audiences.
The Bottom Line for Marketers
As of 2026, Pinterest is no longer the 'niche' platform many media plans still treat it as — but if you're still relying on last-click, pixel-based Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) to make budget decisions, that performance is likely still hidden from view. But with proper incrementality testing and a unified measurement framework, the signal is clear: Pinterest delivers strong, measurable iROAS and deserves a second look when it comes to budget allocation.
And beyond just spending more, be strategic. Make sure you're not overlapping campaigns that cannibalize each other, especially when mixing Performance+ with traditional Pinterest placements. Use overlap data and incrementality results to guide your allocation.
If Pinterest isn’t at least in the mix, and treated with the same strategic rigor as other major platforms, you may be leaving incremental growth on the table.
If you’re interested in running a Measured test on Pinterest, reach out to your Pinterest or Measured account teams to learn more. For Measured, book a demo today. For Pinterest, please visit the Pinterest Business site.