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Collections ads can only be created on desktop and targeted to people on the Pinterest mobile app. GIFs are not supported.

A collections ad is an ad format that appears as a combination of one large, hero asset followed by three smaller, secondary assets. The main asset is known as the hero creative and the smaller, secondary assets are known as the secondary creatives. Collections ads appear in the Pinterest mobile feed. 

Once someone taps into a collections ad, they’ll be taken to a full-screen experience where they can see the hero creative up close and up to 24 secondary creatives.

GIF of someone clicking into a collections ad from their Pinterest home feed and then browsing the shoppable products below the hero image.

Create a collections ad

To create a collections ad, you can either manually create a customised collections ad or you can automatically create a personalised collections ad with a catalogue.

Manually create a customised collections ad with Pin builder by selecting and tagging secondary creatives one at a time. Through this approach, you can curate and control your collections ad content. The available campaign objectives are awareness, consideration and conversions.

Automatically create a personalised collections ad with a catalogue by selecting product groups that you want to feature from your catalogue. Through this approach, a collections ad will select and display the most relevant products for the user from your product feed. Catalogue sales is the only available campaign objective.

Manually create a customised collections ad

To manually create a customised collections ad, you first need to create a collections Pin, then promote it to create a collections ad.

You can create a collections Pin through Pin builder or Ads Manager. You can promote your collections Pin through Ads Manager, Bulk Editor or selected API partners. If your API partner doesn’t have a collections ads integration yet, please contact them directly.

  1. From your desktop, log in to your Pinterest business account
  2. Click on the collapsed menu icon in the top left-hand corner of the page
  3. Under Create, click Create Pin for ad
  4. To upload your hero creative, click on the directional arrow-up circle icon, then select an image or video from your computer, or drag and drop the creative asset into the uploader
  5. Add a Pin title, description and a destination link from your claimed website
  6. Click on the tag icon in the left-hand menu to add secondary creatives
  7. Click on the plus circle icon
  8. Select whether you want to add an existing Pin, enter a URL or select a product ID from your catalogue
    • Your Pins: search by Pin title or description
    • URL: enter a landing page for a product
    • Catalogue: enter an exact match of an uploaded product ID using lowercase letters
  9. Repeat steps 6–7 until you have three or more secondary Pins or products, then click Save products
  10. Click Done
  11. Select a board for your Pin from the drop-down menu, then click Publish
  1. From your desktop, log in to your Pinterest business account
  2. Click on the collapsed menu icon in the top left-hand corner of the page
  3. Under Ads, click Create campaign
  4. Click Manual campaign, then Get started
  5. Under Choose a campaign objective, select a goal
  6. Enter your campaign details
  7. Click Continue to create your campaign and move to create your ad groups
  8. Under Ad group details, give your ad group a name
    • To create multiple ad groups, click + New ad group
  9. Select your Targeting
    • To target a specific audience, click Create new Audience
    • To automatically expand selected interests and keywords based on your Pin, tick the box next to Use your Pin to expand your targeting
  10. Select your Budget and schedule (the budget type can’t be edited once the ad group has been created)
    • To set a max amount you’d like to spend each day select, Daily budget
    • To set an amount you’d like to spend over the course of your campaign, select Lifetime budget
  11. Select your Optimisation and delivery
    • To have Pinterest automatically get the most clicks for your budget, select Automatic (Note: Automatic bidding is available for consideration, conversion, brand awareness and catalogue sales campaigns)
    • To control how much you bid, select Custom
  12. Under Ads, select the collections Pin you want to promote
    • You can look up your collections Pin by ID or filter by format type ('Collection')
  13. Under Selected, enter optional tracking parameters
    • For more details on how tracking parameters are set for collections ads read our article Track a collections ad
  14. Once you’ve selected your collections Pin and have set up your optional tracking parameters, follow the remaining steps and click Publish
  1. From your desktop, log in to your Pinterest business account
  2. Click on the collapsed menu icon in the top left-hand corner of the page
  3. Under Ads, click Bulk Editor
  4. Click Download sample sheet to download a sample spreadsheet
  5. Under Existing Pin ID, enter your collections Pin ID
  6. Under Ad format, enter COLLECTIONS
  7. Enter optional tracking parameters
    • For more details on how tracking parameters are set for collections ads read our article Track a collections ad
  8. Once you’ve completed the above steps and saved your template, click Upload template
  9. Click Upload

Note: If your Pin is already a collections Pin, entering STATIC in the ad format column will launch the Pin as a standard ad.

Automatically create a personalised collections ad

Before you can create a personalised collections ad using the catalogue sales objective, you need to:

  • Make sure that your catalogue has been uploaded and your products are sorted into product groups.
  • Create or identify a Pin (static image or video) that will be your hero creative. You can not upload a hero creative during ad creation.
  • Once you’re ready to get started, you can create and promote your personalised collections ad through Ads Manager, bulk editor or selected API partners. If your API partner doesn’t have a collections ads integration yet, please contact them directly.

    Note: If a product group is already running as a Shopping ad in an existing ad group, you will need to create a new, separate ad group to use the collections ad format.

    1. From your desktop, log in to your Pinterest business account
    2. Click on the collapsed menu icon in the top left-hand corner of the page
    3. Under Ads, click Create campaign
    4. Click Manual campaign, then Get started
    5. Under Choose a campaign objective, select catalogue sales
    6. Add your Campaign details, then click Continue
    7. Under Ad group details, give your ad group a name
    8. Fill in your Targeting
    9. Under Product Groups, select the product group that you want to feature in your collections ad (once selected, a box will appear on the right)
    10. Under Choose a format, select Collections ads
    11. Click on the plus circle icon to select an image or video from your existing Pins to be the hero creative, then click Done
    12. Enter your Hero destination URL and optional Third-party tracking
      • For more details on how tracking parameters are set for collections ads read our article Track a collections ad
    13. Select your Budget and schedule and Optimisation and delivery
    14. Once complete, click Publish
    1. Log in to your Pinterest business account
    2. Click on the collapsed menu icon in the top left-hand corner of the page
    3. Under Ads, click Bulk Editor
    4. Click Download sample sheet to download a sample spreadsheet
    5. Under Campaign Objective, enter CATALOG_SALES
    6. Under Ad format, enter COLLECTIONS
    7. Enter the product group reference ID
    8. Enter optional tracking
      • For more details on how tracking parameters are set for collections ads read our article Track a collections ad
    9. Under Existing Pin ID, enter your collections hero Pin ID
    10. Add your collections hero Pin URL
    11. Once you’ve completed the above steps and saved your template, click Upload template
    12. Click Upload
    Create a slideshow for a collections ad

    Slideshows for Collections ads provide a way for advertisers to produce lightweight, video-like hero content by displaying product Pins from your catalogue as a series of rotating images above your collections ads.

    After you tag Pins within a product group, these pins are pulled into a slideshow and ordered based on relevance to the Pinner. When items are out of stock, they will be removed automatically from the slideshow. We recommend having a minimum of four items in your product group.

    Set up a slideshow for collections

  • From your desktop, log in to your Pinterest business account
  • Click on the collapsed menu icon in the top left-hand corner of the page
  • Under Ads, click Create campaign
  • Click Manual campaign, then Get started
  • Select the Catalogue sales objective. Slideshows for collections are only available for this objective
  • Select the product group you would like to target from within your ad group. You can select multiple product groups to create multiple collections ads in one go
  • A box will appear on the right-hand side of the screen allowing you to choose between the standard shopping and collections formats
  • Choose Collections, then click the Create a hero button
  • Slideshow as the hero type. You do not need to add a hero image
  • Add a hero destination URL and tracking parameters
  • Finalise your budget, targeting and optimisation details
  • Click Publish
  • Preview a collections ad

    You can preview your collections ads through Pin preview when creating or editing a campaign in Ads Manager.

    In Ads Manager, under Ads select your Pin and toggle to Selected. Then click Preview Pin.

    When previewing a collections ad generated using the catalogue sales objective, the hero destination URL (if specified) will appear in Pin preview. If a hero destination URL is not specified, the hero destination URL will default to the organic URL of the selected Pin.

    Note: Any secondary creatives that appear during Pin preview are likely to differ from the secondary creative that appears in a live ad, since the products update automatically to show what’s relevant to each user.

    More about collections ads

    Learn how people interact with collections ads, see how secondary creatives work, and get creative specs and metrics specific to collections ads.

    If someone taps on a collections ad in the feed, they’ll see the hero creative in close-up, with the secondary creatives below.

    If they click on the hero creative, they’ll go to the destination URL.

    If they click on a video hero creative, they'll open the video controls.

    If they click on a secondary creative, they’ll go to the secondary creatives’ destination URL.

    If they reach the bottom of the collections ad and continue to scroll up, they’ll go to the destination URL.

    If they save the collections ad, they’ll save the entire collections Pin to a designated board, not just the individual hero creative.

    Collections ads with video as a hero creative will appear in feed just like collections ads with static images as a hero creative.

    When people on Pinterest see the video in their feed, it will autoplay when it’s 50% in view or more (excluding the secondary creatives). If the awareness objective is selected, the video will loop continuously. If the conversion or consideration objectives are selected, the video will prompt people to “Watch again” once it has played once. 

    If someone on Pinterest taps a collections ad that has a video hero creative, the video will loop indefinitely in the close-up experience. Once in close-up, tapping on the video will open video controls, and does not drive to the destination URL.

    The secondary creatives are manually or automatically tagged when the collections Pin is created. Secondary creatives can be set manually by selecting an existing Pin, entering a product ID from your catalog or entering a URL. Alternatively, secondary creatives can be set by selecting a product group from your catalogue when using the catalogue sales objective.

    Products as secondary creatives

    We support a maximum of 24 tagged products per collections ad. When a product Pin is selected as a secondary creative, the secondary creative will show pricing in the top left-hand corner, followed by the title below.

    When using the collections ad format under the catalog sales objective, secondary creatives are selected and organised based on relevance to the person viewing the collections ad. If an insufficient number of secondary creatives are available, we’ll pull four additional products from your product group and order them based on the highest click-through rate (CTR). If a product is out of stock, it will be removed from the product group.

    You can learn more about how to add secondary creatives to your collections ad in the Create a collections ad section above.

    Static image hero creative

    File type .jpg or .png only, no gifs.
    File size 10MB max.
    Creative quantity Must have 1 hero creative.
    Aspect ratio The aspect ratio must be either 1:1 (square) or 2:3 (vertical).

     

    Video hero creative

    File type .mp4, .mov or .m4v.
    Encoding H.264 or H.265.
    File size Up to 2 GB.
    Creative quantity Must have 1 hero creative.
    Video length Minimum 4 seconds, maximum 15 minutes.
    Aspect ratio Shorter than 1:2 (width:height), taller than 1.91:1. We recommend making your videos square (1:1) or vertical (2:3 or 9:16).


     

    Secondary creatives

    File type .jpg or .png only, no videos or gifs.
    File size 10MB max.
    Creative quantity Minimum of 3 creatives recommended. Maximum of 24 creatives supported.
    Aspect ratio All creatives must have the same aspect ratio of 1:1 (square) or 2:3 (vertical). We recommend making your secondary creatives with a 1:1 aspect ratio to best control how they appear in people’s feeds. If the creative is not 1:1, the cropping will occur at the centre of the image.

     

    Copy

    Title

    Up to 100 characters limit (including spaces). 

    It’s recommended to prioritize the first 40 characters that may show up in people's feeds.

    Description

    Up to 500 characters (including spaces). 

    Descriptions will only appear for organic collections Pins in close-up, or when someone is viewing an organic collections Pin and side swipes or views a downstream collections Pin. Otherwise, descriptions will not show up for promoted collections ads.

     

    In addition to the metrics available in Ads Manager, collections ads use two collections-specific metrics: 

    • Secondary creative impressions: this metric is the total number of views that the secondary creatives receive
    • Secondary creative clicks: This metric is a total of the number of Pin clicks that the secondary creatives receive

    How collections ads reporting is calculated

    Impressions and Pin clicks are reported in aggregate for the secondary creatives that appear within a collections ad. We currently don’t provide individual reporting for secondary creatives. We recommend using tracking parameters to identify which individual products are converting. You can learn how to set these up in our Track a collections ad article.

    Engagement rate includes standard ads engagement metrics in addition to secondary creative saves, secondary creative and hero creative Pin clicks, and outbound clicks.

    Engagement-based conversion metrics include conversions that occur once someone has performed any of the engagement actions (above) and converts.

    Click-based conversion metrics include conversions that occur once someone has clicked on a collections ad in the feed. Secondary creative click-based conversions count towards total click-based conversions.

    Video metrics are available in reporting when using video as a hero creative.

    What’s next?

    Now that you’ve created and promoted your collections ads, read our guide to learn how to Track a collections ad.

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