In June 2024, Pinterest jumped on the AI bandwagon with the introduction of Performance+.
It’s currently in closed beta, and it’s Pinterest’s take on what Meta and Google have been doing with Advantage+ and Performance Max.
The goal? To make campaign management simpler and more effective with AI handling the heavy lifting.
Here’s a breakdown of what we know about Performance+ so far and how it could potentially change the game for advertisers on Pinterest.
Performance+ Explained: Fewer Steps, Better Results
Performance+ is Pinterest's way of making campaign setup easier, cutting down the inputs by half and packing in their best-performing automation and AI tools. Here's how it works:
Super Simple Activation: All it takes is a quick toggle at the start of campaign creation, whether you're focusing on Consideration, Conversions, or Catalog sales.
Ad Groups Made Easy: As soon as you kick off a new Performance+ campaign, an ad group is automatically created—no need to worry about setting that up yourself. We’ll get into that below.
Budgeting Simplified: Performance+ sticks to Lifetime and Average Daily budgets—there's no upper limit on how much you can allocate to a campaign.
Smart creative for Catalog Sales: You can use AI to do things like generate backgrounds for your images, and even automate creative tweaks that turn your catalog into Collections and Shopping ads.
Straightforward Targeting: You get simplified options like country selection, basic age targeting, and the ability to include/exclude customer lists to help boost your campaign’s performance.
Optimised Delivery: With Performance+ bidding, the system works to get you the most results for the lowest cost. For Conversion and Catalog Sales campaigns, you can optimise around conversions or add-to-cart actions.
Product Groups for Catalog Sales: Instead of picking product groups, Performance+ uses the "All Products" option automatically, so you don’t have to make those selections manually.
As you can already tell, the idea is to make the process easier while still giving you the right tools and control to get the most out of your campaigns.
How Performance+ Automates Ad Group Creation
As mentioned above, Performance+ automatically handles ad group creation based on the actions taken during the campaign setup process.
Every Performance+ campaign receives one auto-generated ad group without any manual input required.
If a customer list is included in the campaign, a second ad group is created specifically for remarketing to those users.
For Performance+ Catalog sales campaigns, two additional ad groups are generated: one for prospecting using the “All Products” product group and another for Dynamic Retargeting, which targets users who have already interacted with the brand. It’s important to note that opting out of the Dynamic Retargeting ad group during setup is not possible, nor is there control over how the budget is distributed between ad groups.
However, once the campaign is live, either the Dynamic Retargeting or Prospecting ad group can be paused if necessary.
With that, when a customer list is added to a Performance+ Catalog sales campaign, a third ad group is created to specifically target those users.
Turn Your Pins into Eye-Catching Ads with Performance+
Performance+ Creative acts as an extra set of hands, helping with ad creation across various Pinterest formats.
It automatically optimises your ads to align with your campaign goals and can even use AI to generate backgrounds for product images—whether you're using Performance+ or not.
Creative Optimisations: It automatically transforms your product Pins into different ad formats, like Collections and Shopping ads, delivering the top performers to users at scale.
AI-generated Backgrounds: This feature uses generative AI to create engaging backgrounds for your product images, helping inspire users and drive more interaction.
Flexibility: These creative tools, like background generation and optimisations, can be used separately or together, depending on what works best for your campaign.
Tips to Help Your Performance+ Campaigns Perform Better
Track Conversions Accurately: To make sure you're getting reliable data, set up the Pinterest Conversions API and/or the Pinterest Tag for proper conversion tracking.
Invest Enough To See Results: Make sure your budget allows for enough conversions. A good rule of thumb is to aim for a budget that’s about 5 times your CPA goal.
The More Creatives, The Better: Aim for at least 10 ads per ad group—more if possible—so the system can find the top performers and prioritize them. Remove underperforming ads and add new creative after the learning phase to help the system optimize.
Use Performance+ Creative for Catalog Sales Campaigns: Applying AI-generated backgrounds or creative optimisations can turn your product catalog into thousands of Shopping and Collections ads automatically.
Budgeting for Your Performance+ Test
Set Your Goals Based on Conversion Volume: For campaigns to perform well, aim for at least 50 conversions per week.
If you’re getting more than 50 conversions weekly, go for Performance+ Conversion or Performance+ Catalog Sales campaigns.
If you're below 50, start with the Performance+ Consideration objective to generate interest and boost conversions over time.
Know Your CPA Goals: Make sure your daily budget is at least 5 times your CPA target to give the campaign a chance to succeed.
Optimise Gradually: If things are going well, gradually increase your budget by 20-30% to keep the momentum going.
Wrapping it Up: Why Performance+ is a Win for Marketers
Performance+ really simplifies things. It takes a lot of the heavy lifting off your plate, so you can focus on bigger priorities instead of getting stuck in the weeds of campaign setup. The automation and AI-driven features do a lot of the work for you, making ad creation and targeting smoother and faster.
It’s built to help you get better results without needing to manage every little detail. You can count on Performance+ to handle creative optimisations and smart targeting, so you’re more likely to hit your goals and stretch your budget further.
In short, Performance+ gives marketers a smarter, easier way to run Pinterest campaigns. If you're looking to get more out of your efforts without adding extra hassle, this tool might just be the boost you need.
To learn more, visit Pinterest’s official Performance+ guide.
SO, WHERE DO YOU FIND THIS PARTNER?
Well, aren’t we glad you asked! We at DigiCom are obsessive data-driven marketers pulling from multi-disciplinary strategies to unlock scale. We buy media across all platforms and placements and provide creative solutions alongside content creation, and conversion rate optimisations. We pride ourselves on your successes and will stop at nothing to help you grow.
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