Pinterest is getting a new source of audience data, and this one fits unusually well with what people already do on the platform.
Zillow has partnered with Pinterest to bring its housing-focused audience segments into Pinterest advertising. The deal gives advertisers another way to reach people who may be preparing to buy a home, rent a property, renovate a space or make purchases connected to moving and homeownership.
It’s a fairly natural pairing. Someone browsing Zillow for a fixer-upper can easily be the same person saving kitchen remodel ideas, paint palettes and furniture inspiration on Pinterest a few minutes later.
Zillow Audience Data Comes to Pinterest Advertising
The partnership connects Zillow Elevate with Pinterest’s Media Network Connect, a self-service tool available through Pinterest Ads Manager.
Media Network Connect allows external media networks to share first-party audience information, catalogs and conversion data with advertising partners on Pinterest. Zillow can now use that infrastructure to make its own audience segments available for campaigns running on the platform.
The result is more specific targeting than simply choosing an age group, location or broad interest category.
Advertisers Can Target 34 Zillow Consumer Segments
Zillow Elevate advertisers will have access to 34 consumer segments when reaching Pinterest users.
Those audiences include home buyers, renters, sellers and existing homeowners. Zillow has also built more specific categories around behaviors and housing situations, including people shopping for fixer-uppers and consumers who recently became homeowners.
Zillow says its targeting is built using actual user behavior and more than 200 housing-related signals rather than relying mainly on broad demographic assumptions.
That matters for advertisers selling products that tend to appear around major housing decisions. Furniture is the obvious example, but appliances, home improvement products, insurance, financial services, internet providers, décor brands and moving services could all find useful audiences here.
Pinterest Is a Particularly Interesting Place for Housing Data
Pinterest has spent years positioning itself less like a traditional social feed and more like a visual planning platform.
People often arrive before a purchase has been decided. They save ideas, compare styles and build collections around something they may buy weeks or months later.
Housing fits that behavior almost perfectly.
A home purchase might start on Zillow. The decisions that follow it—what the living room should look like, whether the bathroom needs renovating, which sofa fits the space—can quickly move onto Pinterest.
Pinterest has previously said that 96% of its top searches are unbranded, suggesting many users are still deciding what they want rather than searching for a specific company or product.
For advertisers, catching someone during that undecided phase can be much more interesting than appearing after the shopping decision has already been made.
Pinterest Keeps Building Its Retail Media Advertising Network
The Zillow deal also says something about Pinterest’s broader advertising strategy.
Pinterest has been pushing Media Network Connect as a way for outside networks to bring their own valuable first-party audiences onto the platform. Instead of keeping that customer intelligence inside a retailer or marketplace, advertisers can combine it with Pinterest’s discovery environment.
Pinterest says campaigns combining retail media network activity with direct Pinterest advertising have recorded a 10% improvement in conversion rate compared with direct Pinterest campaigns alone, based on its own data.
Zillow brings a different kind of intent into that system.
This isn’t someone who happened to like a home décor post six months ago. Zillow potentially knows that the person is actively looking at homes, renting, selling or researching a renovation-heavy property.
That signal is considerably more useful.
The Bigger Opportunity Is What Happens After the Home Search
The interesting part of the Pinterest-Zillow partnership may not actually be real estate advertising.
It’s everything people buy because of real estate.
A move can trigger dozens of purchasing decisions. New furniture. Lighting. Paint. Storage. Electronics. Appliances. Landscaping. Contractors. Décor. Financial products.
Pinterest already sits near the beginning of many of those decisions.
Zillow now gives advertisers another clue about why somebody might suddenly be making them.
That combination could make housing intent a particularly valuable advertising signal on Pinterest—and it gives Pinterest another piece of first-party data that competing social platforms may not have access to in quite the same way.
For marketers, the partnership is worth watching less because Pinterest has added another targeting option and more because of what that option represents: social advertising built around what someone appears to be preparing to do next, not simply who an algorithm thinks they are.
Sources
- Social Media Today — Pinterest partners with Zillow for ad targeting
- Zillow — Pinterest and Zillow partnership announcement
- Pinterest Business — Pinterest and Retail Media
