--- title: "Pinterest: the platform you might be missing (Q3 2026 numbers inside)" description: "Pinterest hit 661 million monthly users in Q3 2026. Why it works like a search engine, who it suits, and a simple plan to start." url: https://dumbcmo.com/blog/pinterest-q3-2026-platform-you-might-be-missing category: "Building an audience" tags: ["news", "pinterest", "social media", "earnings", "small business", "ecommerce"] published: 2026-11-01 updated: 2026-11-01 reading_time: 12 min author: "The DumbCMO" --- # Pinterest: the platform you might be missing (Q3 2026 numbers inside) > **TL;DR:** Pinterest hit 661 million monthly users in Q3 2026, up 10%, with over 80 billion searches a month. It works like a search engine, not a feed: Pins keep getting found for months and send clicks to your site. Great for visual, plan-ahead products. Skip it for urgent services. [Notebook](https://dumbcmo.com) › [Blog](https://dumbcmo.com/blog) › Building an audience › Pinterest: the platform you might be missing (Q3 2026 numbers inside) When small business owners ask me where to post, the list is always the same. Instagram. Maybe WhatsApp. YouTube if they’re brave. Almost nobody says Pinterest. And Pinterest just told investors it had more users than ever. This note uses Pinterest’s third-quarter 2026 numbers, reported on 29 October, as the hook. Then the useful part: why Pinterest works differently, who it suits, and how to start without hiring anyone. ## In normal-people words ## The short version - **Pinterest is still growing.** 661 million people used it in a month, up 10% on a year ago. It’s the 13th quarter in a row of record users, according to Pinterest. - **People go there to search.** Pinterest says users run more than 80 billion searches a month, and more than half are commercial: people looking for things to buy. - **It’s young now.** Pinterest says Gen Z is 57% of its users, and two-thirds of Gen Z users say they come to shop. - **Most growth is outside the US and Europe.** The “Rest of World” bucket, which is where India sits, grew 13% to 394 million users. - **It sends people to your website.** That’s the bit Instagram and TikTok don’t really want to do. ## The numbers that matter All figures are for the three months to 30 September 2026, compared with the same quarter in 2025. They come from Pinterest’s own earnings release. **Pinterest Q3 2026, the marketer’s cut** | Number | Q3 2026 | Q3 2025 | Change | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Monthly users (global) | 661M | 600M | +10% | | Monthly users (US and Canada) | 107M | 103M | +4% | | Monthly users (Europe) | 161M | 150M | +7% | | Monthly users (Rest of World, incl. India) | 394M | 347M | +13% | | Revenue (global) | $1,174M | $1,049M | +12% | | Revenue (US and Canada) | $894M | $786M | +14% | | Revenue (Europe) | $193M | $193M | 0% | | Revenue (Rest of World) | $87M | $70M | +24% | | Revenue per user (global) | $1.80 | $1.78 | +1% | | Revenue per user (US and Canada) | $8.38 | $7.64 | +10% | | Revenue per user (Europe) | $1.21 | $1.31 | −7% | | Revenue per user (Rest of World) | $0.23 | $0.21 | +9% | A few more from the earnings call, in Pinterest’s own words: - **Searches, boards created and outbound clicks** in the US and Canada all grew faster than users. - **Ad impressions grew 17%**, while the average price of an ad fell 4%. - **Europe was flat** mainly because cross-border sellers pulled back after an EU rule change on low-value imports. Pinterest said it dragged European growth by about 11 points. Social Media Today, which covered the results, adds that Pinterest gained 21 million monthly users since Q2, 17 million of them outside the US and Europe. > **The DumbCMO:** Pinterest makes $8.38 a quarter from each US user and 23 cents from the rest of us. That gap is why ads there can still be cheap where you are. That last line is my reading, not Pinterest’s promise. Low revenue per user usually means fewer advertisers competing. Test before you believe it. ## What about India? Pinterest doesn’t publish an India user number, so I won’t make one up. It splits users into three regions: US and Canada, Europe, and Rest of World. **India sits in Rest of World**, the fastest-growing region by users (+13%) and by revenue (+24%). Two practical facts from Pinterest’s help pages: - **You can target India in ads**, down to region, metro and postal code. - **Indian businesses can’t set up ad accounts directly.** Pinterest lists India as a market served through an advertising partner, Aleph, with local billing and support. Organic Pins, the free kind, need no partner. ## Why Pinterest is not Instagram On Instagram and TikTok, a post lives for a day or two. The feed moves on, and so does your reach. Pinterest works more like Google with pictures. Here’s the difference in plain words. ### 1. People search, they don’t just scroll Pinterest’s own business blog says people use it “as they would a search engine”: they type a broad idea like “small balcony ideas”, then narrow down. Pinterest also shows ideas before people type anything. On the earnings call, CEO Bill Ready said about 70% of search journeys start with a recommendation from Pinterest’s AI. ### 2. Pins have a long shelf life Pinterest’s help centre says there’s “no set engagement window” for Pins, and a Pin can gain engagement “hours, days, months, or even years” after it’s published. It also says Pins can resurface seasonally. That Diwali gift guide you pin this year can come back next October. ### 3. People are planning, often to buy People use Pinterest to plan weddings, kitchens, outfits, trips and parties. Planning comes before buying. That’s why Pinterest keeps saying more than half of searches are commercial. ### 4. It sends people off the platform Every Pin can link to a page on your site. Pinterest counts these as outbound clicks (The number of times someone taps your Pin and lands on your website or another page off Pinterest.) in its analytics. Instagram mostly wants people to stay inside Instagram. Pinterest is happy to send them to your shop. ## The chai stall version Think of a wedding planner’s scrapbook. The bride’s cousin cuts out a mehendi design from a magazine, a lehenga colour from a shop catalogue, a cake from a bakery flyer. Months later, the family opens the scrapbook and starts calling shops. Instagram is the noisy baraat going past your shop. Everybody sees it, and it’s gone in two minutes. **Pinterest is the scrapbook. You want your flyer in it, with your phone number on the back.** ## Who Pinterest suits, and who it doesn’t On the call, Pinterest pointed to retail as a strength, with financial services, health and travel as newer, growing categories for advertisers. In plain words, it works best when your product is **visual** and people **plan before they buy**. **Is it worth it for me?** - **If** You sell things people want to look at first: clothes, jewellery, home decor, gifts, beauty, handmade goods **→ then** Yes, probably. This is exactly what people search Pinterest for. Start with free Pins linked to product pages. - **If** You help people plan: weddings, events, travel, interiors, recipes, fitness **→ then** Yes. Guides and “ideas” Pins that link to your blog or service page can keep working for months. - **If** You run a blog or sell courses and printables in a visual niche **→ then** Worth a test. Article Pins can pull in your headline and description automatically. - **If** You sell only through Amazon, Etsy, Meesho or another marketplace **→ then** You can still pin, but you can’t claim a marketplace store as your website, so you’ll see less data. A simple site of your own helps. - **If** You sell urgent local services: plumber, AC repair, pathology lab **→ then** Probably not. Nobody plans a burst pipe on a board. Your Google Business Profile and Google search matter more. - **If** You sell boring B2B software or services with nothing to show **→ then** Low priority. LinkedIn, Google and email will likely do more for you. - **If** You have no website at all **→ then** Fix that first. Pinterest’s best feature is sending people to your site. Without one, it’s a mood board for someone else. ## A simple plan to start You don’t need ads to begin. Here’s the order I’d do it in. **Pinterest for a small business, in order** 1. **Get a free business account.** Create a new one or convert your personal account in settings. Pinterest says business accounts get analytics and the option to run ads. New business accounts can only be created on a computer for now. 2. **Claim your website.** This puts your profile picture on Pins from your site and gives you analytics for them, including Pins other people make from your site. You verify it with an HTML tag, an HTML file or a DNS record. You can’t claim most marketplace stores like Etsy, eBay or Amazon. 3. **Turn on rich Pins, or connect a product catalogue.** Rich Pins pull details from your site automatically: price and availability for products, headline and author for articles, ingredients and cook time for recipes. They need a few meta tags on your pages; sites on Etsy and eBay need none. If you sell online, a catalogue uploads all your products as Pins at once. On Shopify, the Pinterest for Shopify app claims your site, installs the tracking tag and connects your products for you. WooCommerce has a plugin too. 4. **Make boards around what people search.** Not “My Products”. Name boards the way a customer would search: “cotton kurta sets for summer”, “small kitchen storage ideas”. Pinterest says boards show up in search too, so give each one a clear title and description. 5. **Make Pins in the right shape.** Pinterest recommends vertical images and videos in a 2:3 ratio (1000 x 1500 pixels), with videos between 15 and 60 seconds. You can also mix in carousels and collages. Sharp photos, good light, your product shown in real use. 6. **Put keywords in titles and descriptions.** Use the words your customers type. Pinterest’s autocomplete in the search bar shows you what they are. Fill every field, add topic tags when offered, and make sure the Pin matches the page it links to. 7. **Show up every week.** Pinterest suggests creating fresh, original Pins weekly, and says you can schedule them up to two weeks ahead. Don’t keep re-uploading the same Pin: it can get you flagged as spam. 8. **Ads later, not first.** Once some Pins clearly bring clicks, promote those. Ads need Pins on your business profile, on public boards, with a real link and no link shorteners. In India, that means going through Pinterest’s ad partner. > **The DumbCMO:** Seven of those eight steps are free. If someone quotes you a “Pinterest growth package” before you’ve done them, ask what they’ll do that you can’t. ## How to tell if it’s working Pinterest Analytics shows a lot of numbers, from impressions to save rate. Three matter most for a small business: - **Outbound clicks.** People who left Pinterest and landed on your site. This is the money number. - **Saves.** People who kept your Pin for later. Pinterest says saves are a signal that helps it show your Pins to more people. - **Sales or enquiries from Pinterest traffic.** For this you need the Pinterest tag (A small piece of code from Pinterest that you add to your website. It records what visitors from Pinterest do there, like viewing a product or buying.). Pinterest says it lets you track conversions and measure campaigns. On Shopify, the app installs it for you. Impressions, the number of times your Pins were on screen, are nice to look at. They don’t pay rent. Give it three months before you judge. Pins can take time to get found, and Pinterest itself says performance moves with seasons and holidays. ## Do this today - [ ] Search Pinterest for the thing you sell. Note what shows up and what the autocomplete suggests. - [ ] Create a free business account on a computer, or convert your personal one. - [ ] Claim your website. If you’re on Shopify or WooCommerce, install Pinterest’s official app or plugin instead. - [ ] Make three boards named after real search terms your customers would use. - [ ] Make five vertical Pins, each linking to a matching page on your site, with keywords in the title and description. - [ ] Put a weekly reminder in your calendar to add fresh Pins. - [ ] After a month, check outbound clicks and saves. Make more of what worked. ## Not-so-frequently asked questions ### Is Pinterest still growing? Yes. Pinterest reported 661 million monthly users in Q3 2026, up 10% from 600 million a year earlier, and its 13th straight quarter of record users. ### How many Pinterest users are in India? Pinterest doesn’t report an India number. India is counted in its Rest of World region, which had 394 million monthly users in Q3 2026, up 13%. ### Can I run Pinterest ads from India? Yes, through Pinterest’s advertising partner, Aleph. Pinterest’s help centre lists India among markets where ad accounts are managed and billed locally through a partner, not set up directly. ### Is Pinterest only for women and recipes? Pinterest’s Q3 numbers don’t break users down by gender. They do say Gen Z is now 57% of users and its fastest-growing group. Recipes are popular, but so are fashion, home, beauty, travel and planning anything. ### Do I need to post every day? No. Pinterest suggests creating original Pins every week. Consistent beats frantic. ### What’s the difference between a rich Pin and a product Pin? A product Pin is one type of rich Pin. Rich Pins sync details from your site automatically. Product Pins show price, stock and product details. Article and recipe Pins are the other types. ## Things your agency won’t say - Pinterest is slow. Most good Pins don’t blow up in a day. That’s the point: they keep working while your Instagram post from Tuesday is already forgotten. - “We’ll get you 10,000 Pinterest followers” is bullsh#t dressed up as a strategy. Followers matter far less than whether your Pins show up in search and get clicked. - Social Media Today points out that users are worried about the flood of AI-generated images on Pinterest. Real photos of your real product are an advantage, not a weakness. ## Jargon Jail **Locked up: “MAU”** Monthly active users. Pinterest counts someone as a MAU if they’re **signed in and visit the site, open the app or use its Save button at least once in 30 days.** It tells you how many people show up, not how long they stay or whether they buy. Use it to judge if a platform is worth trying, then judge your results by clicks and sales. ## Where to go next - New to all of this? Start with [What is social media marketing?](/blog/what-is-social-media-marketing) - More platforms, plain words: the [social media hub](/social-media) - Another Q3 report through a marketer’s eyes: [Reddit’s Q3 2026 results](/blog/reddit-q3-2026-results-for-marketers) - Thinking about paid ads instead? [Instagram ads or Google ads?](/blog/instagram-ads-or-google-ads) - Pinterest is search, so the basics help: [What is SEO?](/blog/what-is-seo) - Before you buy followers anywhere: [Scam watch](/scam-watch#buy-followers) ## Sources 1. Pinterest, Inc., [“Pinterest Announces Third Quarter 2026 Results, Delivers 12% Revenue Growth and Record Users”](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1506293/000150629326000151/q3-26xpressrelease.htm), earnings release filed with the SEC, 29 October 2026. Users, revenue, revenue per user by region, MAU definition. Also on [Business Wire](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261029279208/en/Pinterest-Announces-Third-Quarter-2026-Results-Delivers-12-Revenue-Growth-and-Record-Users). 2. Stock Analysis, [“Pinterest (PINS) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript”](https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/pins/transcripts/723966-q3-2026/), 29 October 2026. 80 billion monthly searches, Gen Z share, 70% of search journeys, engagement growth, ad impressions and pricing, Europe and verticals. 3. Andrew Hutchinson, Social Media Today, [“Pinterest reports solid user growth in Q3”](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/pinterest-reports-solid-user-growth-in-q3/873274/), 29 October 2026. Users added since Q2, AI-generated content concerns. 4. Pinterest Business help: [Get a business account](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/get-a-business-account), [Claim your website](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/claim-your-website), [Create rich Pins](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/rich-pins), [Get started with retail catalogs](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/before-you-get-started-with-catalogs), [Connect your Shopify store](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/link-your-shopify-and-pinterest-accounts), [Set up your merchant profile](https://help.pinterest.com/en/resources/set-up-your-merchant-profile). 5. Pinterest Business help: [Install the Pinterest tag](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/install-the-pinterest-tag), [Review Pinterest Analytics](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/pinterest-analytics), [Pin performance and distribution](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/pin-performance-and-distribution), [Ads overview](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/promoted-pins-overview), [Set up location targeting](https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/location-language-device-and-gender-targeting). 6. Pinterest Business, [“How to build your audience on Pinterest in 2025”](https://business.pinterest.com/blog/how-to-build-audience-pinterest/), 31 July 2025. Search behaviour, keywords, boards, saves, weekly fresh content. ## Related notes - [Discord chats are heading to Google. What community owners should do](https://dumbcmo.com/blog/discord-public-chats-in-search): Discord is putting its 63,000+ Discoverable Servers on the open web. 16 Nov: every one gets a public page that can show AI-written channel summaries. Mid-December: member messages from public channels can appear in Google, without usernames. It’s on by default. Pick your channels before 16 Nov. - [Instagram’s October 2026 update: Features, Series, Live, and TV](https://dumbcmo.com/blog/instagram-october-2026-features-series-tv): Instagram is testing horizontal Features up to about 90 minutes, Clips as Reels, episodic Series, and more discoverable Lives — plus Apple TV in the US. Most of it is invite-only, with no YouTube-style ad share yet. Steal the clip-to-long habit; don’t rebuild your week around a beta. - [What is social media marketing?](https://dumbcmo.com/blog/what-is-social-media-marketing): Social media marketing is showing up where your customers already scroll, often enough that they remember you when they need you. Pick one platform, post for the people who’d actually buy, and count messages and orders, not followers. --- From [DumbCMO](https://dumbcmo.com): The marketing notes you were too embarrassed to take.