So you’ve started running your first Pinterest Ad. Congratulations! Before you celebrate your breakup with Facebook Ads officially, you’ll want to make sure your Pinterest ads are performing and generating the return you want, whether it be new subscribers or revenue. To do that, you need to read the analytics. I’ll share with you a step-by-step method to create your own Pinterest ads report so you can read your analytics at a glance.
Create Your Own Pinterest Ads Report
Learning a new platform can be confusing. Give yourself all the props for stepping out of your comfort zone and wading into Pinterest ads for your business. Hopefully you’ve already downloaded my checklist of 5 things you need to know before running Pinterest ads so everything is in place and you aren’t losing money! If numbers and analytics aren’t your thing, you might be feeling even more hesitation around knowing whether or not your ads are working or how to optimize them.
I am going to take you through a quick tutorial on how to create your own Pinterest report so you can review your analytics at a quick glance and know what to do next!
Start at the top Ads > Reporting then make sure your filters are set up correctly.
Select your date range
Make sure that the date is set to whatever date frame you want to track. For example, you can opt to review your analytics for the last 30 days or 14 days. Or perhaps you want to view a different time frame. That’s all selected within this area.
Select your ad type/objective
This is where things get checked and then disappear! If you are missing your ads, start here because chances are something isn’t checked. Usually I run consideration or conversion campaigns. You can pick those two. If you run catalog sales, then obviously you’ll select that option. Essentially you should check whichever campaign you’re running.
Choose conversion settings
Conversion settings allow you to measure the total impact of your pins. Usually I pick one of two conversion windows: either a 30/30/30, or a 7/7/1. In other words, it will show how many people on Pinterest converted 30 days after they clicked on your ad, 30 days after they engaged with your ad, and 30 days after they viewed your ad.
You would want to choose a larger conversion window if you have a more expensive product because you are trying to learn the timeframe between the time they click on your ad and when they actually purchase.
If I’m tracking for leads, I would pick like a 7/7/1 or 7/1/1 option. This will show me if they clicked on my ad and converted within one day. Most likely a lead will convert.
Select your ad status.
Pinterest reporting also allows you to choose your ad status. Usually mine is defaulted to “all,” so it just shows everything. If you want a more focused view of only what’s active, you could just unclick what you don’t want and you can see what you’re currently running is active and approved.
The default view is “overview.” Start creating your report by clicking on the pencil icon and editing the metrics you want to track. I track these as a default: impressions, frequency, link click and CTR no matter what campaign
Hit “Apply”, name your custom report and voila, you’ve created your first custom Pinterest ads report!
A note of caution: Sometimes when you look for your campaigns in your analytics, it might appear they are missing. If you start clicking around on the different levels, the campaign level, you can click on the ad group level and see there’s nothing here. Don’t panic!
Go back into your status > ad group. You might notice you don’t have any ads running right now. If you toggle to “all” your paused ads will now appear within your report. This would be important if you just started new ads and they haven;t been approved yet or going back to look at old ads that have been turned off.
Which Metrics Should You Track?
I recommend customizing your table with the metrics most important for you when you create your own Pinterest ads report. Having a custom view makes it much easier to read your specific metrics at a glance. The data Pinterest includes is overwhelming and a lot of it is duplicate, so it’s not necessary to have it more than once in your report. There are some standard defaults I want to keep toggled on, but in addition I like to select:
- Spend – how much money has your campaign spent
- Frequency – on the campaign level or ad group level so I know how often my ad has been served or not
- Pin clicks – I want to know if my ads are being clicked on
- CTR – Click Through Rate is the first thing that I look at to see if my ads are converting. This is the ad creative. Is it compelling enough to get people to click through on my ad?
- Saves – Are people saving my ads to refer back to later?
- Pin image – so you know which pin creative it is
- If you are running ads for a leads – you’ll track sign ups, cost per lead
- If you are running ads to make sales – you’ll want to track add to carts and conversions
- If you are running ads for products – you may want to track for purchases and cost per purchase
Hit “save” and name your custom table. You can set is as a default or just a table and then you’ll choose it when you want to read the analytics at a glance.
Summary of How to Create Your Own Custom Pinterest Promoted Pins Rport
Pinterest ads are only effective for your business if you know how to understand the analytics and optimize them. Luckily, it’s easy to create your own Pinterest ads report.
- Within the Pinterest ads manager, you can select ads>reporting
- Select your date range, ad type, objective, and conversion settings.
- You can further customize your report by toggling only the metrics important to you and your campaign.
- Essentially you’ll want to make it easy to read at a glance so you aren’t overwhelmed with data or intimidated by too many numbers.
