Pinterest Shopping Ads: Catalogs, Product Groups, Collections and Retargeting

This guide uses Pinterest Business Help only, mainly Create shopping ads and Get started with retail catalogs, plus the articles linked where they are used. Checked on 12 November 2026. The business account, website claim, Pinterest tag and the other ad formats are in our Pinterest for business guide; the same job on other platforms is in our guides to the Meta catalog, TikTok catalog ads and Google Shopping campaigns.

The four types of shopping ads

Once your catalog is uploaded, Pinterest lets you create four types of shopping ads:

• Standard shopping ads: a single static image promoting one product.
• Video shopping ads: a video clip promoting one product. Pinterest notes that if an item has both a static image and a video, "we'll promote the video in the shopping ad."
• Personalized collections ads: "one large lifestyle image or video and three supporting images promoting relevant products."
• Carousel shopping ads: several images and videos, to show different features of one product, several products, or a story in chapters.

Shopping ad campaigns use the Sales objective, and the products in them come from product Pins: Pins created from your catalog that carry a title, description, price and availability.

What you need before the first campaign

Pinterest's checklist for a retail catalog is:

1. A Pinterest business account.
2. A claimed website.
3. The Pinterest tag installed on that website.
4. A website that meets the merchant guidelines, "with easy-to-find contact details, shipping policy, and refund policy".

The first three steps are covered in our Pinterest for business guide. Rich Pins alone are not enough: only product Pins from a catalog can be promoted as shopping ads.

The catalog: data source, format and required fields

You add a catalog by giving Pinterest a data source (a product feed). There are two ways:

• Hosted: you give Pinterest a URL and it reads the file daily, creating or updating a product Pin for each product. The file must sit on an FTP, SFTP or WebDAV server or behind a direct HTTP/HTTPS download link, with no IP or SSH key whitelisting, and a port in the URL must be 80 or 443.
• Manual upload: Pinterest reads the file when you upload it, and again each time you upload a new version.

Supported formats are TSV, CSV, XML (RSS 2.0 or ATOM 1.0) and Google Sheets. Compressed files are accepted, but not encrypted or password-protected ones or Dropbox files. One retail catalog can hold up to 20 million products.

These fields are required. If any is missing or formatted wrongly, Pinterest says "your entire retail catalog will fail ingestion":

Field	What Pinterest asks for
id	Unique product ID, up to 127 characters
title	Product name as on the landing page, including variant details such as color and size; up to 500 characters
description	Plain text (not HTML), up to 10,000 characters
link	The product's landing page, showing the same product and data; up to 511 characters
image_link	Main image, at least 1000x1500 pixels, no template or placeholder images
price	Number plus ISO 4217 currency code if not US dollars; no 0 values or currency symbols
availability	in stock, out of stock or preorder
item_group_id	Parent ID, only when products have variants

Two details that catch people out: if you change an image, you need a new image URL or "the image will not update", and if a sale_price is given it counts as the current price. Pinterest alerts you to ingestion errors, which can stop the whole feed or some items from updating. If you already keep a Google feed, the field names will look familiar; see our Merchant Center product feed guide.

Product groups

You do not promote a whole catalog directly. You promote product groups: sets of items from it. Pinterest creates some for you, updated once a day:

Auto-created group	Contains	Max products
All Products	Everything in your latest successful feed upload	No limit
Top Sellers	Highest conversion rate (needs the conversion tag)	1,000
Back In Stock	Previously out of stock, now in stock	1,000
Best Deals	Deepest price drop	1,000
New Arrivals	New to your catalog	1,000
Most Popular	Most engagement on Pinterest	1,000

Your own groups use filters such as product type, availability, brand, category, price and custom labels, with operators like is, contains and greater than. A filter only works if that field exists and is filled in your data source, so plan custom labels in the feed before you need them. Shopify stores can also build groups from Shopify collections.

Two more rules from Pinterest: products marked out of stock are not shown, organically or in shopping ads, and if a catalog has several feeds for different countries, choosing a feed sets the ad group's location and language targeting to match (you can change it afterwards).

Creating a shopping campaign

In Ads Manager you choose Sales as the objective, then in the ad group pick your product groups, targeting, budget and schedule, and optimization. The bulk editor has a sample shopping sheet for creating many at once, and the Pinterest API can do the same.

Targeting works differently from other Pinterest ads. Pinterest uses your product data to find people browsing product Pins, and says "Keyword or interest targeting is not necessary for sales campaigns." One campaign can reach several countries with localized content in the right language and currency. You can set placement (browse, search or all), but you can't choose the exact surfaces where shopping ads appear. The full targeting options are in our Pinterest ads targeting guide.

For a video shopping ad, the video comes from the catalog's video_link field; Pinterest suggests putting "video" in the product group name so you can find those groups later. If you replace the images for your whole catalog, delivery may be delayed by a day or two.

Personalized collections ads

A collections ad shows one large hero image or video with three smaller secondary creatives below, in the Pinterest mobile feed; tapping it opens a full-screen view with up to 24 secondary creatives. Collections ads can only be created on desktop and are shown to people on the mobile app.

There are two ways to make one. A customized collections ad is built by hand (in Pin builder or Ads Manager), for the awareness, consideration or leads objectives. A personalized collections ad picks the products automatically from a product group, shows each person the products most relevant to them, and is available with the Sales objective only. For the personalized version:

• Create or choose the hero Pin first; you "can not upload a hero creative during ad creation."
• The hero destination link must match your claimed domain.
• A product group already running as a standard shopping ad needs a new, separate ad group for the collections format.
• Instead of a hero image you can use a slideshow of product Pins from the group. Pinterest recommends at least four items in the group.

The preview in Ads Manager will likely show different secondary products from the live ad, because the products change for each viewer. File types, sizes and ratios for the hero and secondary creatives are in our Pinterest ad specs guide.

Dynamic retargeting

Dynamic retargeting shows people products they, or similar ones, looked at on your site or left in their cart. It is the shopping setup that depends most on the tag:

• An active catalog.
• The Pinterest tag tracking Checkout, Add to cart and Page visit events.
• Events that pass product IDs matching the IDs in your catalog.
• Enough Page visit and Add to cart events in the last seven days.

If a campaign stops after launch, Pinterest says to check these requirements again. You choose a lookback window (the bulk editor takes 7, 14, 30, 60 or 180 days) and the placement must be All or Browse, because dynamic retargeting is not available on Search. The potential audience size is not shown once you select it.

How to add those events with product IDs (line items) and check them with Test events or the Tag Helper is in our guide to the Pinterest tag.

Bidding: Performance+ and ROAS

Pinterest suggests launching shopping ads with Performance+ bidding, which is the default for sales campaigns. Pinterest sets the bids several times a day and aims to spend your whole budget at the lowest cost per result; costs can move around, usually at the start. The alternative is a custom bid, where you set a maximum CPC yourself. Budget types, bid floors and billing are in our Pinterest ads cost guide.

Performance+ ROAS bidding goes further and bids on the predicted value of a checkout. It needs a Sales or Leads objective, Checkout events, and valid checkout values sent through the tag or the Conversions API. Pinterest recommends it for "campaigns with high checkout volume and varying prices across the products."

Approved and verified merchants

When you claim your domain and add a catalog, Pinterest reviews your business against the merchant guidelines; passing makes you an approved merchant. The Verified Merchant Program is a further step, with a blue checkmark on your profile and Pins. It is automatic once you meet all its requirements, including:

• A business account at least three months old, with a profile picture and a completed About section.
• A claimed website at least nine months old that meets the merchant guidelines.
• 75% of catalog products ingested successfully.
• In the last 30 days, at least one page visit, add to cart and checkout event every 7 days; all checkout events with currency and a product_id for each product.

Suspended merchants get 30 days to fix issues. A suspension from the program may leave your approved merchant status, catalog and ads unaffected, but losing approved merchant status also removes you from the program.

How we start a Pinterest shopping account

This part is our opinion, not Pinterest's. We get the tag's Page visit, Add to cart and Checkout events passing product IDs that match the feed before the first campaign, since dynamic retargeting, Top Sellers and ROAS bidding all depend on them. We add custom labels (margin, season, bestseller) to the feed early so product groups can be split later. Following Pinterest's own tip, the first campaign uses the All Products group with Performance+ bidding, and we break groups out once there is data.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a catalog to run Pinterest shopping ads?

Yes. Shopping ads are created from product Pins in an uploaded catalog, grouped into product groups. Rich Pins alone cannot be promoted as shopping ads.

Do Pinterest shopping ads need keyword or interest targeting?

No. Pinterest uses your product data to show relevant products, and says keyword or interest targeting is not necessary for sales campaigns. You can still set placement and other targeting.

How often does Pinterest update my product catalog?

A hosted data source is read daily. A manually uploaded file is read each time you upload it. Auto-created product groups update once per day.

Why are some of my products not showing in shopping ads?

Products marked out of stock are not promoted. Also check ingestion errors on your catalog and that the product is in the product group you are running.

Which Pinterest tag events does dynamic retargeting need?

Checkout, Add to cart and Page visit, with product IDs that match your catalog, and enough Page visit and Add to cart events in the last seven days.

Shopping ads only work as well as the product data and tracking behind them. See our website development service and all our services, or email [email protected].