Pinterest has reached a new milestone of 600 million monthly active userswhile it also posted a 17% year-over-year revenue increase in the third quarter, continuing its steady growth as a major discovery platform.
First, on users. As mentioned, Pinterest is now active 600 million times per month, which equates to 22 million additional visitors in the last reporting period.
As you can see in this chart, Pinterest has been adding users in every region, which is important because Pinterest actually lost 2 million active users in Europe in its latest report.
Pinterest is getting the most attention in the ‘Rest of World’ category, with Brazil and Mexico showing significant growth.
That will provide more opportunities for Pinterest’s business, although usage in the US and EU remains critical to the bottom line.
As you can see in this graph, Pinterest makes a lot more money from its US audience, while the average revenue per user in Europe is also significantly higher than in the ‘Rest of World’ category.
ARPU isn’t rising significantly either, so while Pinterest is gaining users, it needs to do more to maximize those opportunities and bring more advertising products to market in more areas.
In terms of revenue, Pinterest brought in just over a billion this quarter, mainly through its advertising business.
That’s a steady result, but not a significant one, and Pinterest will be looking for a big boost in year-end sales to boost those numbers even further.
That’s likely. Pinterest has become a popular discovery platform for many consumers, with improved search tools, including recent AI additions, that help direct users to more relevant product matches.
Last week, Pinterest announced its new AI assistant tool, which uses visual similarities, combined with conversational questions, to find relevant items.
Pinterest’s focus on shopping tools has helped better align its AI applications with core uses. So instead of adding AI tools that can create arbitrary images or videos, the additions remain tied to actual use. That means its discovery tools are getting better and better, and if Pinterest can eventually integrate more direct shopping options, it could become a much bigger consideration for many more consumers.
Although 600 million is pretty good as is. The real trick lies in the integration of purchasing activities, and while Pinterest has done a lot of work to get more brands to upload their product catalogs to the platform, to amplify in-app listings, the company really needs a more direct line to fuel this behavior and secure direct purchasing activities.
It seems like Pinterest will eventually move in this direction, though in-stream shopping is difficult to integrate and there’s no real precedent to suggest shoppers want to make purchases on non-shopping apps.
That’s more applicable to other social platforms, where shopping isn’t the focus, and in that sense, perhaps Pinterest is now so attuned to shopping, and so far removed from social media, that it makes more sense.
But anyway, that seems like the logical option, from an online product catalog to an all-in-one e-commerce platform, with AI tools that help you find more matches that match your personal style.
Overall, it’s a somewhat mixed result, with user growth back on track but revenue a little slower in comparison. I expect Pinterest to see a lot more interest in the fourth quarter, but again, it needs more integrated shopping to complete the conversion to this platform the craft shopping tool.
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