Did Pinterest completely blow it on Retail Media?

A consumer app that is all about Stuff People Want seems to have zero claim on a potential $100 billion category

Every day there’s a new one.

The latest brand to get into the retail media sector is Drizly, the booze-ordering brand is owned by Uber, which also now runs ads. Drizly joins Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Marriott and CVS and Walgreens and Best Buy and Kroger and you get the point.

This ad category - which really didn’t exist a few years ago, isn’t just growing, it’s going viral. GroupM predicts it will eclipse $100 billion globally by end of this year, accounting for a stunning 11% of all digital advertising.

I’ve said this before - it has to eat at Google that they company doesn’t own a huge chunk of this new market, since most retail media ads are either based on product searches or all about promoting relevant products. In other words, they’re a lot like AdSense and AdWords.

Still, I can understand why all of these retailers might not want to cede yet another part of their business to Google.

However - can someone help me understand how Pinterest doesn’t own this category? Or at least a huge piece of it?

After all, the reason Google's ads work so brilliantly for advertisers since is that the people tell Google what they are looking for when they search. Shouldn’t the platform that is all about showcasing stuff you want to buy excel at delivering ads from companies that, you know, sell stuff?

Well, even as Pinterest has looked to make it easier for retailers to showcase products, and even inked deals with some like Kroger, it has found itself in this middle ground - focusing on ‘consideration’ over pulling the trigger- which appears to have left it out of branding conversations and performance.

Rachel Tipograph, Founder & CEO of MikMak, a company that specializes in helping brands navigate retail media, said that Pinterest is becoming “less and less relevant” for most of her clients. As recently as 2017, it was in the top four platforms in terms of investment -and today she estimates that it’s fallen down to 7th or 8th place.

To be sure, those rankings might be different for food and home decor brands- categories that are both Pinterest strengths, Tipograph noted.

Let’s be fair - Pinterest did bring in $666 million in Q2 globally. So something’s working for marketers. Yet it also lost $43 million, just changed CEOs, is losing users, and is now bringing in programming execs to pivot (again) to video and maybe even trying to emulate TikTok?

For retailers and other brands, one major problem seems to be that Pinterest’s ad products have fallen far behind the other major platforms, said Tipograph. But the issues are bigger.

“They are having an identity crisis,” she said. “What is the role of Pinterest?”

Again, to be fair, few of the social platforms have been able to get people to actually do the shopping within their own walls. Facebook has tried this forever. These companies are excellent and generating demand, and sending people elsewhere to close the deal.

Still, it seemed to speake volumes earlier this week when Walmart inked an eCommerce ad deal with Snap and TikTok. Something’s off if Pinterest isn’t drawing interest from the most Middle America brands as it becomes a major ad player.

So what happened?

Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, drew a perhaps unexpected comparison between Pinterest and the French ad tech firm Criteo. While Pinterest “focused on a sleek, Silicon Valley design approach” Criteo leaned into eCommerce, even after getting rocked by all the cookie changes.

Criteo is surging again, while Pinterest is, still finding itself?

To be fair, Criteo isn’t a consumer-facing brand, and as an ad tech company, is built to deliver targeted ads. Yet, so are Meta and Snap and Amazon. Pinterest surely could have seized on retail media early on.

“Criteo crushed it I moving aggressively into retail media and Pinterest wiffed on it,” said Morgan.

It’s worth asking, did Pinterest wiff on retail - or never really try?