User Engagement with organic shopping content rises 44% y-o-y: Pinterest Q1 2020 Results

Key HighLights from Pinterest Q1 2020 include growth in the userbase, the state of essential drivers of the platform such as shopping, advertising, and more.

Pinterest Q1 2020 observed a dipped usage in the early phase of the pandemic, and then a significant rise.

The rise was driven by Pinners looking for practical solutions on topics such as education, household chores, and preventive measures against the virus. Recently users are also returning to more future-oriented interests such as vacation and event planning.

Key Highlights

• Q1 revenue grew 35% year over year to $272 million

• Monthly active users rise to 367 million with a 26% global increase year over year

• Since mid-March, the platform has also seen record levels of engagement globally in impressions, searches, saves, board creation and visitation

• During the quarter, the platform's growth was primarily driven by video, conversion optimization and shopping ad products as well as by CPG advertisers.

• A sharp reduction was experienced in the middle of March as advertisers responded to changes in demand related to COVID-19.

Response to COVID-19

In mid-March, Pinterest launched a custom search experience featuring results from experts, a homepage banner that links to WHO facts, a ban on ads that claim to offer cures or treatments and continued to offer a way to report health misinformation.

Also Read: Pinterest adds planning tools to boards

Shopping

Catalog feed uploads increased 144% sequentially in Q1, boosted in part by the migration of existing merchants participating in the Shopify beta test and the Verified Merchant Program.

User Engagement with organic shopping content on Pinterest increased 44% year over year, and total organic traffic to retailers increased 2.3x. Users engaging with shopping content continued to increase year over year through March and April.

Advertising

Pinterest says that advertisers on the platform are expecting more tangible results and higher conversion rates on their ad spend right now. The Q1 results are showing positive signs for advertisers on the platform.

During Q1, revenue from both conversion optimization objectives and shopping ads grew faster than the platform's overall revenue. Advertisers are increasingly able to predict and measure affordable conversions on Pinterest. And attributed conversions on Pinterest have grown by almost 40% in April, as compared to March.

Pinterest is also working on better automation of the Ads Manager, that might help attract and retain mid-sized advertisers.

Automatic bidding aims to get an advertiser the most clicks at the lowest possible CPC while also spending their entire budget. Automatic bidding for conversion optimization objectives is expected to roll out over the next few months.

Pinterest is not providing any guidance expectations for revenue, Given the uncertainties related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

You can view the full reports here below.