What you need to know:

• Pinterest’s new Country Manager ANZ, former Meta APAC exec Melinda Petrunoff, said the platform's local team has tripled in size in the past year and now has more than 40 people on the ground.
• Pinterest is today hosting its second upfronts and ramping up ad formats.
• But the platform is a minnow – it recorded local revenues of just over $6m in 2020 and less than $3m in 2019, according to its most recent Australian financial documents. Revenue outside the US more than doubled in 2021, meaning it's likely it doubled again in Australia.
• Firm refused to divulge gender split, though understood to be vastly female.
• Platform claims 7.8 million monthly active users in Australia.
• Claims 3.8 million images “pinned” each day. Users that pin ideas are seven times more likely to buy that product, reckons Petrunoff. 

Home improvement

New Pinterest ANZ country manager Melinda Petrunoff, who joined after eight years at Facebook in Singapore, said the social platform is the “home of shopping”. It must be a small home – an en vogue tiny house – as the platform banked revenues of less than $3 million in 2019 and just over $6 million in 2020, per its most recent financials filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

But the Australian minnow is now being overfed: Over the past year, the local Pinterest team has tripled to circa 40 people on the ground, with five remaining open roles. Globally, the business has grown its employee base by 27 per cent over the same time.

The platform is positioning itself as an alternative to the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch, TikTok and Reddit (which also recently hired a new country lead). It is a “visual inspiration platform”, per Petrunoff, using both machine and human curation to surface images and ads according to a user’s tastes. “Pinners”, can save – or “pin” – images to their own boards or follow the boards of others. 

There are 7.8 million monthly active users on Pinterest in Australia, according to Nielsen, saving 3.8 million pins every day. And that can be directly linked to sales – on platform shopping has grown 20 per cent in the past year, claims the firm. Globally, it claims a "12x product catalogue upload" over that period.

Plus, "if consumers are actually saving a product on the platform, they're actually seven times more likely to purchase it,” Petrunoff said.

“So rather than impulse buying, we find that Pinners are very deliberate in their purchases. They come with intent. They are looking for inspiration. And when they find a product to buy, we actually see that the value of their purchases is two times greater than other platforms.”

What do brand campaigns look like?

Pinterest may be well marshalled by global HQ, but won't succeed locally without good local data and case studies. That is what it is now building, said Petrunoff.

So far, brands like Big W, MAC Cosmetics and Foxtel have partnered with Pinterest on campaigns. For Big W’s Spring collection last year, they designed the platform campaign around what people had been searching heading into that season. 

“That allowed (Big W) to successfully be able to reach new purchasers, new consumers, but equally, be on trends to drive that inspiration that was relevant,” Petrunoff said. A partnership with Shopify means merchants, like Big W, can upload a catalogue and it can be converted into shoppable product pins.

MAC was the first brand in Australia to launch a paid partnership campaign, running a series called the Faces of Australia through a Gen Z-focused account called Centennial Beauty.

“They created both a video and a photo series… and I think MAC has just done such a fantastic example of strategically using the platform to not only share their inspiring beauty content, but to really harness values that are important to them at the same time,” Petrunoff says.

“Being able to showcase new products, which they did, which was their new foundation at the time.”

Foxtel also used Pinterest to promote its Wentworth series in mid-2021. 

There are possible future augmented reality products, too. Pinterest recently announced AR “Try On for Home Decor” tech in the US that lets users place homewares from retailers like Walmart in their living room.

Global stats suggest another doubling of revenues

For almost 10 years after it was founded, Pinterest had no presence in Australia – it first opened an office in 2019 and has been a relative minnow in the social media space. Its local revenues, A$2.89m in 2019 and A$6.06m in 2020, are small compared to Snapchat, another rapidly growing player, which booked A$50.8m in 2019 and A$78.2m in 2020.

Globally, Pinterest’s revenue was US$1.69 billion in 2020 and US$2.58 billion in 2021. Taking out the US – by far the platform’s biggest market – it had 110 per cent revenue growth in international markets, from US$268m in 2020 and US$562m in 2021, suggesting at least a doubling again of its revenue locally in 2021.

Agency relationships crucial to growth

Like Facebook and Google, Pinterest is a self-service platform that direct clients can use, but Australia is a “heavy agency market”, Petrunoff said, meaning relationships with agencies will be key to Pinterest’s growth.

“We absolutely focused on working with agencies as partners, and the team have actually been doing that successfully over the last couple of years,” she claimed.  

“When you're talking about all of these other platforms that are all very active in the market, I think what stands out to me is just how different Pinterest is. So ... ensuring that agencies are aware of how different the consumers are on the Pinterest platform… It just means that Pinners are coming to the platform to actively do something or buy something. And I think that's what stands out.”