How CPG brands can drive in‑store sales with Pinterest

Open up your latest media plan. You’ll probably see a familiar pattern. Channels that drive discovery are often judged on awareness metrics, not on the downstream business impact they can create. That feels sensible, until you look at when people actually choose what goes into the basket. 

Those decisions often happen earlier, while someone is still planning, comparing and building a shortlist. If you only measure those early moments on recall or reach, you miss the sales they unlock later. This is where Pinterest fits.

People come to the platform to plan what they will do, try or buy next, not just to scroll. New CPG research in Canada from Nielsen shows what happens when brands show up in those planning moments. What did they learn? Nielsen Match Market Testings measured 80% of Pinterest campaigns generated statistically significant incremental sales.¹

Proof, not platform metrics

Nielsen analyzed 15 studies conducted in Canada between H1 2022 and H1 2025. Focused on CPG, the work covered food, beauty, personal care and beverage brands. The goal was simple: understand how Pinterest contributes to sales lift for CPG advertisers.

Maximize sales lift with more than one campaign goal

Many CPG brands face the same challenge in digital advertising: you send people to retail partners or into stores, so it’s hard to see every sale. That often means optimizing for awareness even though what you really care about is sales. The opportunity is to use Pinterest in a way that reflects that full path to purchase, not just the top of the funnel.

Maximize sales lift with more than one campaign goal

In Nielsen’s analysis, CPG advertisers that ran Pinterest campaigns with more than one objective, for example awareness plus consideration or sales, drove 1.5x higher sales lift than those using awareness alone.¹ In other words, mixing objectives on Pinterest can help turn more moments of inspiration into measurable sales.

Make more of every idea with multiple ad formats

Ad formats matter for how your campaign lands. Static image ads offer a clean, quick way to put a single product or idea front and center. Video lets you show how something works or feels in motion, which can draw people in for longer. Carousels invite people to swipe through multiple frames—whether that’s different products, use cases or steps in a story.

Nielsen’s analysis found that campaigns using a mix of formats were more effective at driving in‑store sales. Advertisers that included at least two ad formats saw 1.5x higher sales lift on featured products, and those using four or more formats saw 1.6x higher sales lift on halo products.¹ The strongest combo? Static and video together. Campaigns that used both measured the highest sales impact across featured and halo products.¹

How often, how long, how many: making your media work harder

People on Pinterest are in planning mode. They search for ideas, save what they like. They could be thinking about this week’s shopping list or an event months away. That planning mindset makes it especially important for brands to stay present.

Nielsen’s analysis found that campaigns with higher weekly frequency, longer flight lengths and stronger reach all helped drive more sales lift for CPG brands. Campaigns that reached people around 1.5- 2 times per week were more effective at driving sales than lighter‑weight flights.¹ In that range, advertisers saw roughly 1.5 times higher sales lift on featured products and about double the lift on halo products compared with lower‑frequency campaigns.¹

The same pattern showed up in campaign duration. Because people often collect ideas on Pinterest weeks before they are ready to spend, short bursts did not always cover the full path to purchase. Campaigns that stayed in market for ten weeks or longer delivered significantly stronger sales impact for both featured and halo products.¹

Reach rounded out the picture. Campaigns that reached a large share of their target audience were more likely to move the needle on sales than those that stayed narrow. In Nielsen’s analysis, campaigns that reached at least 40% of their target audience saw noticeably higher sales lift on both featured items and related products.¹

Taken together, the takeaway is simple: on Pinterest, CPG campaigns have more room to drive sales when they show up often, stay in market for longer stretches and reach a large share of the right shoppers.

Act on these insights

You don’t need a complicated reinvention. You need a plan built for the way people use Pinterest.

1.  Plan around real CPG missions, not just audiences. Anchor your campaigns to concrete shopper missions: weekly dinner planning, seasonal cleaning, bathroom reset, haircare overhaul. Then align your keywords, targeting and creative to those missions, so your ads show up when people are actively planning what to do and buy next. When you’re ready to scale across missions, Pinterest Performance+ can help streamline setup and optimization.

2. Make it easy to move shoppers from inspiration to action. Pair idea-led creative (recipes, routines, how-tos) with clear product cues and where-to-buy context, so people can move from Pin to purchase with ease. If you do have product catalouge, use shoppable formats to shorten that path even further.

3. Use measurement to move Pinterest from test budget to core investment. Treat measurement as an ongoing practice, not a one-time setup: align on the outcomes that matter, strengthen your signals, use more than one measurement method and keep revisiting what you learn to adjust your strategy.