A decade of visual search data. A taste graph trained on hundreds of billions of interactions. Eighty billion monthly searches every month, half of which are commercial. Pinterest has built the shortest path between inspiration and purchase of any online platform. Users are there. The intent is there. In the first quarter, revenues started to match.
The AI stack behind the discovery engine
At the heart of Pinterest’s AI strategy is its taste graph, built on hundreds of billions of user interactions over the course of a decade. Every search, save and click adds a signal. This signal trains models that decide what each user sees next.
“When a user knows what they want but can’t quite describe it, an image can do what text can’t,” CEO Bill is ready Ali said Earnings call.
In the first quarter, Pinterest expanded Pennock, its generative retrieval system, to serve content globally across all surfaces. Instead of separate models optimized for each surface, Pennock creates personalized results for each user at once, informed by the full depth of their taste and history of interests. The launch improved search fulfillment by approximately 180 basis points and resulted in a approximately 180 basis point reduction in CPA and CPC for search deck advertisers.
Pinterest also updated its search ranking model in Q1, expanding user context windows by 30 times. The system now uses up to 16,000 user actions over a two-year period to inform search results. This launch improved search fulfillment by approximately 70 basis points and saved approximately 390 basis points.
The company also builds Canvas; An in-house AI image generation model trained exclusively on Pinterest data. It already supports creative optimization for advertisers, dynamically editing backgrounds, and turning catalog images into lifestyle images. Pinterest says it works at a much lower cost than leading third-party models. The latest version supports real-time image editing in key sectors.
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Where the cash gap lives
Pinterest has generated five times more clicks for advertisers over the past three years. Revenues have not grown at anything close to this rate. This gap is the business problem that Ready Now is organized around to solve.
“We are still in the early stages of fully monetizing engagement and trading intent on our platform,” the CFO said Julia Donnelly He said in the call.
Pinterest Performance Plus, the company’s AI-powered programmatic ad suite, is the primary vehicle. Nearly 30% of low-funnel revenue is now generated through additional performance campaigns. Advertisers who use it increase their lower-funnel spend at nearly twice the rate of non-adopters. One luxury jewelry brand conducted a four-week test and saw a 46% increase in ROAS and a 62% increase in conversions.
It’s still early. Performance Plus only reached general availability about a year ago. Mid-market, SMB and international advertisers are still a small fraction of what they could be.
The bigger structural issue is scaling. Pinterest is piloting direct integrations with advertisers’ measurement systems, allowing its AI offerings to respond to each advertiser’s specific definition of value, whether that’s lifetime value, profit per order, or something else. In early testing with an advertiser that prioritized LTV, the integration resulted in a 15% to 20% improvement in LTV return on ad spend.
Large retailers, the largest segment of advertisers on Pinterest, remained a headwind in the first quarter. Tariff-related margin pressure makes this group cautious. AI-driven bidding improvements partially offset declines later in the quarter, but the structural issue has not been resolved.
“Of Pinterest’s more than 80 billion monthly searches, half are commercial in nature, while ChatGPT’s own data indicates that only 2% of its requests are commercial,” Reddy said.
What else stood out?
- Pinterest acquired TV Scientific in the first quarter, giving it the ability to expand its taste graph beyond its own platform into connected TV campaigns. Early results with one home furnishings retailer showed a 190% increase in incremental audience reach and a 159% increase in incremental sales. Framed CTV ready as your first step toward monetizing Pinterest audience data outside of the Pinterest app.
- Pinterest launched a native A/B testing tool in beta directly in Ads Manager in Q1, allowing advertisers to run structured tests to compare Extra Performance campaigns to standard campaigns. The company said early results are strong.
- Generation Z now represents over 50% of Pinterest’s user base and is the fastest growing demographic. Reddy pointed to Pinterest’s decision to make accounts private by default for users under 16 in 2023 as a catalyst. He said the decision was expected to hurt Generation Z engagement. It did the opposite.
- Pinterest launched a new brand campaign in the US and UK earlier this month targeting Gen Z and Millennial audiences across TV, streaming, cinema, outdoor and digital channels through the end of the year.
Topline results and forecasts
Q1 2026 revenue was $1,008 billion, up 18% year over year, or 15% on a constant currency basis, above the upper end of guidance. Global monthly active users reached 631 million, up 11% year-over-year, a record high for the tenth consecutive quarter. U.S. and Canadian revenues were $750 million, up 13%. Europe revenue was $186 million, an increase of 27% reported or 16% in constant currency. Rest of World revenue was $72 million, up 59% reported or 50% in constant currency. Ad impressions increased by 24%; Average ad prices decreased by 5%.
