The news: Pinterest introduced a flurry of new offerings for marketers at its annual Pinterest Presents advertiser summit.

• Visual Search Ads. Advertisers can bid for a top placement in search results and Pin closeups. A combination of keywords and a “distinctive ad format” reaches consumers as they research, compare products, and move toward a purchase.
• Self-serve A/B testing. This makes it easier for brands to measure impact and optimize campaign strategies and performance.
• Priority Products. It gives advertisers control over which products are being promoted during key moments, such as sales items or seasonal products. It’s compatible with the Pinterest Performance+ AI advertising suite.
• App Promotion. The objective, now in global beta, gives advertisers a direct way to drive app installs and reduce costs per install.

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready framed Visual Search Ads as a way for marketers to reach shoppers at the exact moment they’re seeing a product, saving it, and deciding whether to buy. The tool is compatible with Performance+ and will be available in beta to eligible advertisers in coming weeks.

We expect Pinterest will reach 23.6 million US social buyers in 2027, or 10.0% of digital buyers, giving it a large user base to test these formats against.

Digging in: Pinterest argues that keyword search is giving way to image-led discovery, and the company is trying to claim the territory and retain its exploration-driven niche.

“We’ve been visual-first because, ultimately, people shop and discover with their eyes in the real world,” Pinterest vice president of product marketing and ops Julie Towns told EMARKETER in April. Visual Search Ads offer brands a paid entry point at a moment when purchase decisions are still open.

Eighty-four percent of purchases by global consumers are driven by preexisting brand bias, per WPP Media, but over 95% of Pinterest searches are unbranded, per company data. That means ads placed directly inside visual search results can give smaller or lesser-known brands a chance to break through during comparison moments rather than being reliant on name recognition.

Recommendations for marketers: Those running Pinterest campaigns already should test new formats alongside existing Performance+ activity. Use self-serve A/B testing to compare visual search placements against standard Pin promotions, build product-forward inventory with multiple variants, and develop creative for specific audience niches.

Watch whether conversion rates hold as betas expand, and track how saves and search data feed into Performance+ optimization in coming months.