Pinterest has reached a new milestone of 600 million monthly active users, while it also posted a 17% year-over-year increase in revenue in Q3, continuing its steady growth as a key discovery platform.
First off, on users. As noted, Pinterest is now up to 600 million monthly actives, adding 22 million over the last reporting period.
As you can see in this graph, Pinterest added users in every region, which is important, because it actually lost 2 million actives in Europe in its last report.
Pinterest’s gaining the most traction in the “Rest of World” category, with Brazil and Mexico seeing significant growth.
That will provide more opportunities for Pinterest’s business, though usage in the U.S. and EU remain critical to its bottom line.
As you can see in this chart, Pinterest is earning way more money from its U.S. audience, while its average revenue per user in Europe is also significantly higher than the “Rest of World” category.
Its ARPU is also not rising significantly, so while Pinterest is gaining users, it needs to do more to maximize those opportunities, and bring more ad products to market in more areas.
In terms of revenue, Pinterest brought just over a billion for the quarter, primarily via its ad business.
That’s a steady result, but not a significant one, and Pinterest will be looking for a big boost in its end-of-year sales, in order to drive those numbers higher.
Which is likely. Pinterest has become a go-to discovery platform for many consumers, with its improving search tools, including recent AI additions, helping to guide users towards more relevant product matches.
Just last week, Pinterest announced its new AI assistant tool, which uses visual matches, combined with conversational queries, to find relevant items.
Pinterest’s focus on shopping tools has helped to better align its AI applications to its core use case, so rather than adding in AI tools that can create random images or video, its additions remain tied to actual usage. Which means that its discovery tools are getting better as a result, and if Pinterest can eventually integrate more direct shopping options, it could become a much bigger consideration for many more consumers.
Though 600 million is pretty good as it is. The real trick lies in the integration of purchase activity, and while Pinterest has done a lot of work to get more brands uploading their product catalogs to the platform, in order to power its in-app listings, what it really needs is a more direct line to feed into these behaviors, and secure direct purchase activity.
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 that shoppers want to make purchases in non-shopping apps.
That’s more applicable to other social platforms, where shopping isn’t the focus, and in this sense, maybe Pinterest is now so aligned with shopping, and so distant from social media, that it makes more sense.
But either way, that seems like the logical option, taking it from an online product catalog to an all-in-one eCommerce platform, with AI tools to help you find more matches that align with your personal style.
Overall, it’s a little bit of a mixed result, with user growth back on track, but revenue slowing slightly in comparison. I expect Pinterest to see a lot more interest in Q4, but again, it does need more integrated shopping to complete its conversion into the artisan shopping tool.
