Pinterest’s chief revenue officer Bill Watkins has told B&T that it was not a “surprise” to him that 2024 was the company’s biggest Cannes ever, citing the growth of its full-funnel offering and its import to marketers looking to reach high-intent customers who in distinctly brand safe environments whilst retaining scale.
“Advertising on Pinterest is advertising for good… We’re the most brand-safe platform out there,” he told B&T on the company’s Manifestival beach on la Croisette.
We ask him whether Pinterest’s recent announcements of greater full-funnel capabilities and new AI-powered tools or whether being a nice, safe and positive place online — something increasingly elusive — was cutting through for marketers.
“The latter has always been imperative but what is becoming more ubiquitous is an appreciation of the former. Both need to be true and it creates a competitive advantage for us because do both uniquely,” he added.
“It comes back to knowing your user. Nine out of 10 Pinners [Pinterest’s collective noun for its users] want to be inspired and discover new ideas.”
When it comes to inspiration and creativity, Pinterest certainly lived those values more than any other tech platform with a beachside set-up in Cannes. Located in the middle of la Croisette — the beachside road in Cannes — Pinterest’s Manifestival beach stood out for a number of reasons.
First, it was open to the public. While every other company staunchly refused members of the public access, seeking to preserve a feeling of business seriousness and appropriateness, Pinterest’s set-up seemed to be about giving back to the regular folk as much as offering a place to conduct important client meetings.
Second, the activations were actually good. While Cannes in Cairns attendees may have seen a very similar tattoo parlour a couple of weeks prior to Cannes Lions, the Croc marble dipping was new.
Plenty of guests — both in the industry and members of the public — were intrigued by the upcycling activation that allowed guests to ‘repurpose’ old soccer jerseys into accoutrement for handbags and the like.
More than one attendee told B&T during the week that it was their favourite beach and more than one attendee, to this pom reporter’s relief, managed to liberate a jersey without it meeting the scissors.
Taken together, it’s safe to say that Pinterest lived its brand during Cannes — something very few others did.
“What’s important to us is knowing our users and staying true to who we are as a platform and investing in what makes us different. In the past, we didn’t always invest in what makes us different,” Watkins told us in a small but delightfully kitsch meeting room at the beach club, slightly away from the hullabaloo.
“Since we’ve recommitted to that in the middle of 2022, it’s had a marked improvement in our business on the core product side, the user growth and engagement side and on the outside. It’s a trend, really owning who you are, celebrating who you are and it just so happens that we’re really proud of who we are and that we’re known as this positive corner of the internet.”
Of course, while it is great to see Pinterest taking its brand so seriously, it does not necessarily put meat on the table for itself or its clients — something the former Yahoo man Watkins would be acutely aware of as the chief revenue officer.
“Historically, the majority of our business was upper-mid funnel. We’ve been known for inspiration and discovery but, as we’ve said many times, we’ve always had merchants on the platform but their stores were closed. Now their stores are open and open en masse,” he said.
“Last year, we launched a product called Direct Links. We’re a 14-year-old company and we doubled clicks off the platform to merchants last year and we halved our cost per click. That typically doesn’t happen,” Watkins said.
In fact, showing that Pinterest’s business has moved from the slightly fluffier top of the funnel to the hard-nosed performance end, Watkins explained that two-thirds of the company’s revenue comes from lower-funnel activities.
During Cannes week, Pinterest revealed new AI-powered creative tools to give merchants the ability to create personalised product ad pins at scale. It also announced some preliminary results from its Perfomance+ tools, including one client that had seen a 10 per cent improvement in CPC for Consideration campaigns.
“We’ve seen seven straight quarters of sequential gains in user growth and engagement. In Q1, users were 12 per cent globally and engagement up 20 per cent,” he explained.
“AI is only as good as the data it trains, we’ve got 700 billion pins organised into 10 billion collections. We’re really good at actually knowing what you’re gonna be interested in, not what you did.”
While that may be true, it doesn’t discount the fact that other platforms — also visible on the beach in Cannes — make more money than Pinterest despite being distinctly unfriendly places on the internet and with far lower-intent users.
When we put that to Watkins, he said he “respected” the question but that Pinterest’s “business momentum” was clear.
There are certainly some numbers to show that Pinterest’s renewed overtures to the advertising industry are not only effective but are coming at the right time.
While 80 per cent of its users are international, they account for just 20 per cent of the business’ revenue. Around 30 per cent of Australians call themselves Pinners and that number jumps to 47 per cent of Gen Z. What’s more, clicks and saves of shippable Pins increased 130 per cent year-on-year.
“Half of them [Gen Z] have wallets today, we’re all gonna grow up, and they’ll all have wallets in the future, but they’ll have grown up on a platform that’s looking out for their mental health and emotional well-being more so than any other, in my humble opinion,” said Watkins.
“And by the way, 60 per cent of our audience are millennials, Gen Xers and so forth. During the time when we’ve been seeing this growth in Gen Z users and engagement, we’ve also seen five straight quarters of sequential quarter-on-quarter gains in revenue and we just printed the highest-ever revenue growth we’ve seen in three years. We’re proving that both can be true.”
Stick around on B&T for more of the biggest news from Cannes Lions.
