Pinterest released its performance update. The firm reported the strong improvement in revenue and set a new record high of usage.
This makes the platform well-positioned for the actual holiday shopping rush.

Firstly, on active users, Pinterest added 15 million more users in Q3, taking it to 537 million MAU. That's quite a bit of a rise in its growth momentum as compared to Q2, where it only added 4 million more actives.

All of which, by the way, is relative; 4 million is still a lot of people coming to the app daily. But in social media terms, 4 million is minimalist, while 15 million is much more of a welcome outcome for the app.

This is also an important notch in Pinterest's larger growth story because the platform did come off the rails there for a little bit.

In fact, way back in 2020, during the early days of lockdowns attributed to COVID, which forced everyone to shop from home, Pinterest's usage witnessed tremendous growth; hence many market analysts have assumed that this would usher in a sustained shift in trend of how people shop. However, once physical stores reopened most people returned to their usual habits and usage on Pinterest responded accordingly by declining.

It takes some time to recover from it, but Pinterest surpassed the COVID highs and is on the way to building a firmer foundation for further success.

There is just one source of concern here, that Pinterest growth is pretty flat in its two biggest revenue markets, namely in the U.S. and EU.
Pinterest's generating far more revenue from users in those two regions, so the fact it's not expanding the audience reach here could impact its ad potential. It is growing the ad business elsewhere, though, which will have future value. This is not growing in any meaningful way in the regions that matter most in this regard, though.

Most social apps have reached, or are reaching, the saturation point in Western markets, so it's not an unsurprising outcome, as such. It just puts more pressure on the company to devise alternative advertising options that tap into their potential, which risks annoying users if they overstep the mark. As such, it is safer to expand on ad potential in other regions, but as you can see from above charts building an ad business is not easy, at least Pinterest's EU ARPU numbers will still lag way behind the U.S.
In its reported overall revenue, Pinterest brought in $898 million for the quarter representing 18% year-over-year growth. 
That's a strong result, and once again, with Q4 sales reporting in, from what is learned here from last year, Pinterest is going to have an excellent wrap-up on 2024. Its focus on enabling more shopping opportunities, its improvement of its digital matching and try-on capabilities in itself is itself holding incredible appeal to an increasing user base and as it continues to focus on building tools, that indeed seems to make it a more valuable destination for even more shoppers.
And those options are getting better. This past year, Pinterest has continued to grow its AI-powered "Body Type Filters," making it easier for Pinners to discover matches that even more accurately reflect their body type.
More AI elements have been added into its creation process for ads, to let marketers tap into key usage trends and improve how their content is presented.

Important improvements, but they come at a price.
For its research and development cost, Pinterest has demonstrated an almost 25% increase this year and expects such costs to continue increasing into the latter half of the year.

Makes sense. Other platforms are spending billions on AI development and though Pinterest does not enjoy the same level of resources in that respect, it simply has to queue up and provide more options so it can maximize the shopping experience in the app.

That is Pinterest's key appeal. The other than provide users with the ability to save things and then get recommendations relative to your favored style, important benefit for brands is that it enables a far more complete product display and experience than they can within their own online stores. The better Pinterest does this, the better positioned it will be to stay a key shopping destination, driving more activity and engagement.

All in all, indicators for Pinterest are good, with improving results, and steadily increasing engagement. Maximizing its ad opportunities in non-U.S. markets will help to boost its market appeal, but regarding user experience, Pinterest is unmistakably on the right track and has stayed true to its goals rather than jumping on the latest social media hype.