Pinterest Ads vs Facebook Ads: Choosing the Right Platform for Your Campaigns

When it comes to advertising on social media platforms, choosing between Pinterest Ads and Facebook Ads can significantly impact your marketing strategy. Pinterest Ads are ideal if your business thrives on visual content. They are also suitable if your target audience is predominantly female and interested in lifestyle, fashion, and crafts. On the other hand, Facebook Ads offer a broader scope, reaching a diverse audience with varied interests and demographics.

Evaluating these two platforms involves understanding your business goals. Pinterest Ads can drive brand awareness and product discovery as users often search for ideas and inspiration. Meanwhile, Facebook Ads excel in reaching a wider audience base, allowing for detailed demographic targeting. Facebook Ads are beneficial if your goal is conversion and sales across various market segments.

You should consider your target audience’s behavior and hangout spots online. While Pinterest users tend to engage with content that provides inspiration for projects, Facebook users engage with a mix of personal, entertainment, and news content. Recognizing where your audience is more active can guide your choice for a successful advertising campaign on either of these platforms.

Understanding Pinterest ads

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Pinterest offers a unique platform for businesses aiming to reach a visually-oriented audience. It emphasizes creativity and inspiration, making it ideal for industries like fashion, home decor, and lifestyle.

How Pinterest ads aork

Pinterest ads primarily operate through promoted pins. These are standard pins that businesses pay to promote to a wider audience. You can choose from various formats, including video pins, carousel ads, and shopping ads. To get started, set a budget and define your target audience based on interests and demographics.

Your engagement is measured by metrics such as click-through rates and saves. Pinterest’s visual search technology further enhances ad reach by matching your pins with user searches. This means your ads appear in relevant searches, ensuring better visibility.

Key benefits of Pinterest for business

On Pinterest, businesses find a platform tailored for inspiration and discovery. With over 450 million monthly active users, there’s a vast audience ready to engage with new ideas. High intent users mean people often browse Pinterest for products and solutions. The platform is especially beneficial for businesses in fashion, lifestyle, and home decor.

Visual content reigns supreme here, driving high engagement from aesthetically appealing graphics. Brands can also leverage Pinterest’s unique features like Buyable Pins, allowing users to purchase without leaving the app.

Demographics of Pinterest users

Pinterest boasts a diverse user base, but it’s significantly popular among women, who make up about 60% of its audience. This makes it a prime spot for industries like fashion and home decor. However, men and younger audiences are increasingly joining the platform.

Understanding the demographics helps businesses tailor their content. A significant portion of users fall between the ages of 18 and 34, adding value to targeting strategies. The platform is also popular among high-income households, creating opportunities for businesses catering to luxury and lifestyle interests.

Facebook ads fundamentals

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Facebook Ads offer businesses a detailed approach to digital advertising, leveraging advanced audience targeting and a comprehensive ad ecosystem. The platform’s tools facilitate reaching specific demographics, enhancing brand awareness, and optimizing ad performance.

The mechanics of Facebook advertising

Facebook advertising operates through the Facebook Ads Manager, a robust tool providing diverse ad formats like carousel and video ads. Carousel ads allow multiple images or videos in a single ad, engaging viewers with various options. Video ads capture attention effectively, promoting content through dynamic visuals.

You manage budgets and bids, choosing between cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) options. This flexibility allows refined control over advertising spend. Ads appear on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms in its network, maximizing visibility through a wide social media platform reach.

Audience targeting with Facebook ads

Audience targeting is a key advantage. Facebook lets you reach specific demographics using detailed targeting options, ensuring your ads connect with the right audience. You can refine audiences based on attributes like age, location, interests, and behaviors.

Custom audiences, created from customer data, allow retargeting previous visitors or app users. Lookalike audiences help expand reach by targeting users similar to your existing customers, increasing the chance of engaging potential leads. These targeting strategies make Facebook Ads a powerful tool for driving relevant traffic and enhancing brand awareness.

Evaluating Facebook’s ad ecosystem

Facebook’s ad ecosystem offers a multifaceted landscape for advertisers. The integration with Instagram boosts the reach, reaching a younger demographic essential for many brands. Ad placements extend beyond news feeds to include stories, videos, and marketplace options, offering diverse avenues for engagement.

Facebook provides extensive analytics to evaluate ad performance. Metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversions allow you to assess campaign effectiveness. This data-driven approach ensures you optimize strategies for better results. The comprehensive nature of Facebook’s ecosystem supports advertisers in achieving varied objectives and scaling marketing efforts efficiently.

Comparing Ad formats and content

Pinterest and Facebook offer distinct ad formats that cater to different marketing goals. From visually engaging content to video marketing strategies, both platforms provide unique opportunities to capture audience attention and boost engagement.

Visual appeal and content types

When it comes to visual appeal, Pinterest focuses heavily on high-quality graphics and images. Its ad formats, such as shopping ads, are tailored to seamlessly blend into users’ pinboards, making them appear as organic content. This creates a visually appealing experience that enhances brand awareness.

In contrast, Facebook offers a variety of ad formats, including static images, carousels, and collection ads. The diversity in Facebook’s content types allows you to tailor your message for multiple objectives, from driving engagement to prompting direct sales.

Video marketing on Pinterest and Facebook

Video content has become a crucial tool for marketers on both platforms. On Pinterest, video ads focus on creating inspiration and showcasing products creatively. These videos are integrated into the user feed, surrounded by related pins, enhancing the contextual appeal.

Facebook excels in video marketing by offering immersive experiences. Utilizing features like Stories and Live videos, you can engage audiences with dynamic content. With advanced targeting options and analytics, Facebook videos help in achieving greater visibility and interaction. Both platforms offer unique strategies for leveraging video to increase engagement and drive action.

Strategic targeting and conversion

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To effectively reach and engage audiences, understanding the strategic targeting and conversion capabilities of Pinterest and Facebook ads is crucial. Carefully leveraging each platform’s unique strengths can significantly improve targeting, conversion rates, and overall ROI.

Targeting capabilities

Pinterest and Facebook both offer robust targeting options, but they vary in approach. Pinterest focuses on interest-based and keyword targeting, allowing you to reach audiences based on their current interests and search behaviors.

Facebook provides advanced targeting options, including demographic, interest, and behavioral targeting. You can also create lookalike audiences to expand your reach. Using these tools, you can precisely define your audience segments, enhancing your ability to connect with potential customers efficiently.

Conversion optimization strategies

Effective conversion optimization strategies differ between platforms. On Pinterest, high-quality visuals and using relevant keywords influence users to act. Creatives aligned with user searches drive better engagement and conversions.

Facebook, with its detailed audience insights, allows you to test various ad formats and placements. Optimizing for specific actions like website conversions or app installs boosts conversion rates. Tracking and analyzing conversion data on both platforms ensures continuous improvement and higher ROI.

Retargeting and audience engagement

Retargeting plays a vital role in re-engaging users who have interacted with your content but have not converted. Pinterest and Facebook both offer retargeting pathways. Pinterest enables you to serve ads to users based on their engagement with your Pins. This keeps your brand top-of-mind, encouraging conversions.

Facebook’s Pixel allows you to retarget users who have visited your website, refining ad delivery based on user interactions. By using these retargeting options, you maintain audience engagement and nurture conversion opportunities.

Cost analysis and budgeting

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When comparing Pinterest ads and Facebook ads, understanding costs and budgeting strategies is essential. Each platform offers unique pricing models and varying potentials for return on investment (ROI), making budget allocation critical.

Determining advertising costs

Advertising on social media involves varied cost structures. With Facebook ads, you encounter Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Mille (CPM) models. CPC charges you each time someone clicks on your ad, while CPM bills you for every 1,000 impressions. The costs here can fluctuate based on competition within your target audience and industry.

Pinterest, while also utilizing CPC and CPM, typically sees lower CPC rates compared to Facebook, making it appealing for businesses with smaller budgets. This is influenced by engagement levels and the platform’s current advertising demand. Understanding these differences helps you anticipate potential expenses on each platform.

Allocating budget for maximum ROI

Maximizing ROI requires strategic budget allocation. Start by assessing your specific marketing goals and target audience. On Facebook, fine-tuning audience targeting options allows for budget optimization. This enables effective distribution of funds across various campaign objectives such as conversions or brand awareness.

For Pinterest, consider investing in “Promoted Pins” for high engagement opportunities. Create a budget plan that reflects your desired outcome. Invest in content that resonates with Pinterest’s visually-driven user base. Monitor performance metrics like conversion rates to adjust spending dynamically. This ensures your advertising budget aligns with the best ROI potential on both platforms.

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Pinterest Ads vs. Facebook Ads: which platform Is right for your brand?

Choosing between Pinterest Ads and Facebook Ads can shape the success of your marketing strategy. Pinterest Ads are perfect for visually driven brands, especially those targeting a female audience interested in lifestyle, fashion, or DIY projects. If your business offers products that thrive on discovery and inspiration, Pinterest is a strong contender.

Meanwhile, Facebook Ads provide a wider reach with robust targeting options across demographics, making them ideal for driving conversions and sales. The right choice depends on your business goals and audience behavior. Want help choosing and managing the right platform? Quickly Hire connects you with fractional paid advertising experts to craft winning campaigns on Pinterest or Facebook.


  • Hayley leads Quickly Hire’s marketing team. Born, raised, and residing in Toronto, Canada, Hayley enjoys traveling and has a passion for promoting a corporate world that allows businesses to find the best talent without geographic or lifestyle limitations. When she isn’t writing content or working with other clients, Hayley enjoys painting, drawing, working out and playing fun aunt to her sister’s dog Louis.


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