How to Gear Up Auto Creative for Pinterest

Using Pinterest is a way to visually chronicle ideas and aspirations—home improvement projects, celebrations, DIY crafts, meal planning—that live on boards, adjusted over time.

The content we pin is not always a to-do list for the moment but a catalog of inspiration and research to pull from when ready to make decisions. This makes Pinterest an ideal place for consumers to go when contemplating a product with a higher price tag and longer purchase journey, unlike impulse-buys like clothing or cosmetics.

Over time, Pinterest has become a go-to source for people who are considering a car purchase. In fact, 90% of those looking to buy a car research online before purchasing, and Pinterest is able to reach 35% of consumers who are likely to buy a car in the next 6 months.

Pinterest offers the reach auto brands need, but delivering high quality creative is up to the brand. When done best, auto ads on Pinterest should leverage the unique qualities of the platform—its creative focus and ability to get undivided attention.

To that end, we partnered with Pinterest to understand how marketers can most effectively build creative for Pinterest. Using our Creative Studio—VidMob’s own tool which uses machine learning to analyze individual frames of video ads—to understand the creative choices that can make a campaign more successful. (You can learn more about it here.)

We analyzed 152 campaigns, 307 videos, over 20,000 frames, and nearly 350,000 AI tags to understand the characteristics of the most successful auto ads on Pinterest, and here’s what we found:

Creative featuring outdoor imagery increased engagement.

Creative including cars outside were most successful among viewers on Pinterest.

Showing cars navigating in cities boosted Closeup Rate.

Creative featuring automobiles navigating city streets resonated with Pinterest users. Ads that showed cars driving in cities saw Closeup Rates that were 50% higher than average.

Highlighting a vehicle successfully navigating storms, snow, and rain captivated viewer attention.

The problem-solution narrative proved to be effective. Viewers reacted positively to watching safe and reliable vehicles in treacherous conditions, reflected by a Closeup Rate and Engagement Rate 2x higher than average.

Focusing on individual features boosted engagement.

Viewers were drawn into ads that visually highlighted key automobile features. When ads started by focusing on details such as the steering wheel, tires, headlights, or the console, engagement rates increased 60% compared to the average.

This is not to suggest that auto advertisers should Frankenstein their ads by including all of these elements, but rather these findings should be inspiration for how to capture attention and inspire audiences. It’s this intentionality—particularly in the early frames of a Pinterest video ad—that sets it up for success.

If you found this interesting and want to learn what creative elements marketers should consider for beauty ads on Pinterest, sign up for our webinar.