How Pinterest Performance+ automated ads work in 2026

Pinterest introduced Performance+, its automated campaign type, in October 2024. In the first quarter of 2026, roughly 30 percent of the revenue Pinterest earns lower in the funnel came through it, and the company said advertisers using it were growing their lower-funnel spend at about double the rate of those who were not. Pinterest has kept adding to it through 2026.

What Performance+ takes over

• Objectives: consideration, leads and sales.
• Bidding: handled by Performance+ bidding.
• Targeting: cut down to country, age and customer lists. Interest, keyword and language targeting are not available.
• Budgets: lifetime or average daily.
• Ad groups: created for you, and sales campaigns get remarketing and prospecting groups.
• Creative: Pinterest can generate backgrounds, resize assets automatically, and convert product Pins into collections and shopping ads.

Pinterest's setup advice

• Install the Conversions API or the Pinterest tag.
• Budget around five times your target cost per acquisition.
• In leads and sales campaigns, aim for more than 50 conversions a week.
• Load ten ads into each ad group.
• Give the learning phase about two weeks.

Additions in 2026

• New customer acquisition, a Performance+ exclusive that Pinterest says raises new-customer conversions by 64 percent on average. Shopify merchants also gained one-click Performance+ shopping campaigns.
• Dynamic creative selection went live worldwide in June and picks the strongest creative for each impression. By Pinterest's measure it lifted clicks 7.5 percent over the model it replaced.
• Smart Assembly, still in early testing, assembles ads from uploaded images for advertisers who have no catalogue.
• Three September announcements, all in beta for qualified advertisers: Priority Products, self-serve A/B testing and an objective for promoting apps.
• A campaign optimisation score inside Ads Manager, rating setup, creative mix and signal strength.
• A pilot of AI bidding connected to the advertiser's own measurement, which expanded in the third quarter.

The AI tools alongside

• Business Assistant sits in Ads Manager and the mobile app, highlighting trends that are breaking out and recommending Pins to promote. It is in closed beta in the US.
• Pinterest's MCP server opens campaign data, analytics and keyword insights to outside AI tools. Dentsu, Havas, PMG and Omnicom's Jump450 are among the agencies trying it.
• Canvas, the image model Pinterest built itself, creates the generated backgrounds. Pinterest's management puts its running cost an order of magnitude below third-party models.

How to read Pinterest's own results

Pinterest cites Mejuri, whose return on ad spend rose 46 percent and conversions 62 percent over a four-week test. In testing, smaller advertisers on return-on-spend bidding earned a 28 percent higher return. In 2025, catalogue sales campaigns running on Performance+ came in at a 20 percent lower cost per acquisition. All of these are Pinterest's own figures: grounds for a test, not a forecast for your account.

Measurement, and a move into TV

• The Conversions API sends web, app and offline sales events from your server, and integrates with Shopify and Google Tag Manager. Pinterest says brands using it capture 28 percent more attributed conversions.
• For measurement, Pinterest's partners include Northbeam, Triple Whale, AppsFlyer and Shopify.
• In February 2026 Pinterest bought tvScientific, a connected TV ad company, for 465.1 million dollars. It starts in the US and is due to join Performance+ by 2027.

Budget facts

There is no published Pinterest minimum budget, and the often-quoted five dollars a day did not come from Pinterest. Choose a lifetime, flexible daily or fixed daily budget; on any one day, spend can run to 125 percent of the daily figure.

If you advertise in the Gulf

• Performance+ was on the list of formats available in the region in 2024. Ask DMS, Pinterest's regional partner, whether it still is.
• With targeting limited to country, age and customer lists, your creative's language does much of the targeting for bilingual audiences.
• Set up the Conversions API before launch: without conversion data, automation has nothing to learn from.
• Make the ten ads in each group genuinely different, not variations on one idea.
• Tag every Pinterest link with consistent UTM parameters, so your own analytics can check the numbers Pinterest reports.

Weighing up a Performance+ test? ALXO would be glad to look over your tracking and creative with you before any budget goes live.