How to Set Up Pinterest Shopping Ads for Your Print Shop

Pinterest Shopping ads are catalog-based ads - they pull directly from your product feed and show up in search results and the home feed as product pins. When someone searches "botanical art print" on Pinterest and your matching product appears with a price and a direct link, that's a Shopping ad at work.

For print shops with a solid product catalog, Shopping ads are the most direct path to purchases on Pinterest. This guide walks through every step of the setup.

What Pinterest Shopping Ads Are

Unlike standard Promoted Pins (which you create manually), Shopping ads are generated automatically from your product catalog. Pinterest takes your product title, image, price, and URL and builds the pin. They appear in:

• Search results for relevant keywords
• The home feed for users with matching interests
• The "More ideas" section on product pins

Because they're catalog-driven, you can promote your entire product catalog at once - or specific collections - without creating individual pins for every product.

What You Need Before You Start

Three things need to be in place:

1. Pinterest Business account - not a personal account. If you have one, log in. If not, create one at business.pinterest.com.

2. Pinterest Tag installed on your Shopify store - this is the tracking pixel. It fires purchase events, add-to-cart events, and page visits, allowing Pinterest to measure conversions and optimise your campaigns.

3. Product catalog uploaded and approved - your products need to be synced to Pinterest before you can run Shopping ads. Pinterest reviews the catalog feed before approving it for advertising.

Step-by-Step Setup

Step 1: Install the Pinterest App in Shopify

Go to the Shopify App Store and install the official Pinterest app. Once installed, connect it to your Pinterest Business account. This single integration handles the Pinterest Tag installation, catalog syncing, and keeps product data updated automatically.

After connecting, verify the tag is firing by using Pinterest's Tag Helper extension in Chrome. Open your store, add a product to cart, and check that the AddToCart and PageVisit events appear in the Tag Helper panel.

Step 2: Sync Your Catalog

In the Pinterest app within Shopify, find the catalog section and confirm your products are syncing. The app creates a product feed that Pinterest ingests daily. After the first sync, Pinterest will review your catalog - this typically takes 24-48 hours.

Once approved, your products appear in Pinterest Ads Manager under Catalogs.

Check your catalog for issues after the first sync:

• Missing prices (products with no price won't be eligible)
• Images that are too small (Pinterest requires at least 600x900 pixels)
• Missing product descriptions
• Out-of-stock products (you can include them but they won't convert)

Step 3: Create a Campaign in Pinterest Ads Manager

Log into ads.pinterest.com. Click "Create campaign."

For the objective, select Catalog sales. This is the objective built specifically for Shopping ads.

Give the campaign a name ("Print Shop - Shopping"), set your campaign budget or leave it at the ad set level, and click Continue.

Step 4: Set Up Your Ad Group

Select your catalog. Choose the Shopify-synced catalog you just set up.

Choose your product group. You can advertise all products at once, or filter to a specific collection. For a first campaign, "All products" works fine. As you gather data, you can split by collection to see which categories perform best.

Targeting: For Shopping campaigns, keyword targeting is the most important lever. Add keywords that describe what you sell:

• Broad: "art print," "wall art," "printable art"
• Category: "botanical print," "landscape art," "abstract print"
• Descriptor: "framed art print," "A3 art print," "large wall art"

Use the Pinterest search bar to research - type a term and note every autocomplete suggestion. Those are real searches.

You can layer in interest targeting alongside keywords. Interests like Home Decor, Interior Design, and Art are useful additions for Shopping campaigns to expand reach beyond direct searchers.

Targeting location: Set this to the countries you ship to.

Step 5: Set Your Budget

For a first Pinterest Shopping campaign, start at $15-25/day. This is enough to generate real data without overcommitting while you're in the learning phase.

Pinterest campaigns go through a learning phase in the first 7-14 days where the algorithm is finding who responds to your ads. Don't make major changes during this period and don't judge performance too early.

Step 6: Review Your Pin Creatives

When you're running Shopping ads from a catalog, Pinterest auto-generates the pins from your product images and data. You don't manually create each pin - but you should review how they look.

In the ad group setup, Pinterest shows you a preview of how your product pins will appear. Things to check:

• Product images look good in the 2:3 vertical format
• Product titles aren't truncated awkwardly
• Prices are displaying correctly

If your product images are flat white-background shots, consider updating your Shopify product photos with lifestyle mockups - the print shown on a wall in a real room. These typically outperform white-background images significantly on Pinterest.

Optimising After Launch

Identify Your Best-Performing Products First

After 14 days, check which products are generating the most clicks and purchases. These are your proven performers. Consider creating a separate ad group specifically for these products with a higher daily budget.

Products with no clicks after 30 days are likely either not well-represented in your current keyword list or are too niche for current Pinterest search volume. Try adjusting keywords or temporarily pausing those products.

Add Negative Keywords

As your campaign runs, check the search terms report to see what people are actually searching when they see your ads. If you're selling premium art prints and your ads are showing for "free printable art," add "free" as a negative keyword. Irrelevant traffic wastes budget.

Bidding Strategy

Start with autobidding - Pinterest's automatic bidding. This tells Pinterest to optimise for purchases within your budget. Once you have 20-30 purchases tracked, you can explore manual bidding to reduce cost-per-purchase on your best-performing products.

What to Expect in the First 30 Days

Days 1-7: Learning phase. CPMs may be high and ROAS may look poor. This is normal.

Days 7-14: Performance starts to stabilise. You'll begin to see which products are getting clicks and which aren't.

Day 14: First real checkpoint. Look at click volume, add-to-cart rate, and cost per purchase if you have any. Adjust keywords if you're seeing irrelevant traffic.

Day 30: Full assessment. Compare ROAS to your Meta benchmarks. A ROAS of 1.5x or above is worth continuing; under 1x (spending more than you're making) needs investigation - usually a product image, keyword, or targeting issue.

The key metric at 30 days is cost per purchase. If it's within a profitable range, increase your daily budget by 20-30% and let it scale.

If you want help setting up Pinterest Shopping alongside your Meta campaigns, or you're not sure whether Pinterest makes sense for your catalog, Artvertise's free audit covers both channels and gives you a clear starting point. Book your free audit here.