Buy Pinterest through your DSP

šŸ“Œ Pinterest’s 63% lift in new-to-brand buyers and how to test it, Google’s new pay-per-lead terms, and more!

Share

Howdy readers 🄰

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

šŸ“Œ Your Pinterest programmatic test brief, filled in and ready to send

šŸ“¢ Google Ads tests AI creative reports, adds audience controls and updates lead terms

šŸ† Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP, then a hearty welcome! You and 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers have reached the right place. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

Together with New Engen

Your next winning ad needs a different voice 

Your product solves a real problem. But when every ad makes a promise, buyers need a reason to believe yours. 

A qualified expert explaining how it works can give them that reason.

Grapevine, now part of New Engen, creates ads delivered through creator and publisher handles with production managed from brief to launch.

You approve the angles and ship product. Grapevine sources creators, handles briefs and payments, then produces and posts the content.

  • Madison Reed achieved 20% efficiencies over target CPA and 50% higher LTV.
  • Mathnasium cut Meta CPL by 33% in under 30 days.
  • Cirkul achieved 15-50% lower TikTok CPA and nearly doubled CTR through creator whitelisting.

Put this approach to work with your first campaign on Grapevine.

Kick off by November 30 and your first campaign is free: 8 statics and 1 article worth $1,500.

šŸ“Œ Your Pinterest programmatic test brief, filled in and ready to send

Pinterest launched programmatic deals for display and video on October 26. You can now buy its inventory through Amazon DSP, Google's Display & Video 360 or Yahoo DSP, with Magnite as the main supply partner and Google Ad Manager covering Latin America and Asia Pacific. It's live in North America, South America, and Asia Pacific.

Pinterest's pitch rests on 640 million monthly users and more than 80 billion monthly searches, over half of them commercial. Its showcase test with haircare brand Moroccanoil reported 15% incremental reach with 1% audience overlap, 63% more new-to-brand buyers and a 20% higher click-through rate.

If you already buy through one of those DSPs, below is a test brief you can hand to your team or agency. Swap in your own numbers.

Objective

Find new-to-brand buyers at a cost close to our best prospecting channel. The Moroccanoil result points to new-buyer reach as the strongest case, so that's the goal. Reach and cheap views are secondary.

Eligibility check

Confirm our DSP supports Pinterest deals in our account, and ask about minimums. If we buy only through Pinterest's own ad manager, this brief doesn't apply.

Budget and length

10% of monthly DSP spend for four weeks. At $30,000 a month, that's $3,000. These numbers are illustrative.

Creative

Built for planners and searchers: product-focused images and short video with a clear idea, such as "five ways to style this." No recycled hard-sell display banners.

Measurement

  • Overlap: use DSP reach reports to see how many people reached on Pinterest also saw our other inventory. Pinterest's own example was 1%. Ours may differ.
  • New buyers: count first-time orders tied to the test. If $3,000 drives 40, cost per new buyer is $75.
  • Reporting: same format as our other DSP buys, so the comparison is fair.

Decision rule, agreed before launch

  • Within 20% of our best channel's cost per new buyer: double the budget for another month.
  • Between 20% and 100% higher: refresh creative and run two more weeks.
  • Twice as high or worse: stop.

The thresholds are my judgment. Set yours before launch so the result decides, and nobody argues afterward.

Owner and dates

Name one owner, a start date and a review date four weeks later.

Send it with one question

Ask your DSP contact or agency whether Pinterest deals are available to you and what minimums apply. Their answer decides whether the brief goes ahead.

šŸ“¢ Google Ads tests AI creative reports, adds audience controls and updates lead terms

Google Ads is introducing new tools to help advertisers improve creative performance, control audience targeting and manage lead-generation campaigns, with AI-powered recommendations and clearer campaign settings.

The Breakdown:

  • Google Ads is testing a weekly AI-powered Asset activity report, suggesting new headlines, identifying top-performing creatives, and highlighting emerging industry search trends.
  • The beta report organizes insights into four categories: Featured, Asset performance, Asset diversity, and Industry trends, helping advertisers identify creative testing opportunities. Availability remains limited.
  • Google Ads is introducing three audience reach options, allowing advertisers to expand beyond selected audiences, restrict targeting by age and gender, or limit delivery to matching audience segments.
  • Google is also rolling out new opt-in terms for pay-per-lead campaigns, covering business verification, customer communications, and service responsibilities, although eligibility and lead pricing remain unclear.

Google is giving advertisers more control over campaign targeting while using AI to identify creative improvements. However, tighter audience restrictions could reduce conversions, and advertisers should validate AI recommendations and review lead-generation terms before making changes.

Together with Omnisend

One Plain-Text Email Outearned a Month of Campaigns 

Before you send everyone the same BFCM discount, check who keeps coming back. Your repeat buyers could justify an offer of their own.

For one skincare brand, 36% of customers had ordered more than six times. Enflow Digital used Omnisend to turn that loyalty into nearly $18,000 from one plain-text email.

Omnisend helped the team:

  • Find purchase patterns in minutes, cutting out hours of manual analysis.
  • Build a VIP audience of customers with four or more orders, ready for a separate promotion.
  • Keep the VIP offer focused on engaged buyers by filtering out contacts inactive for 180 days.

The offer was available only through email: a higher discount plus a gift above a higher spend threshold. It increased order value while helping clear slower-selling stock.

Co-founder Karolina shares how it came together so you can apply the approach to your own repeat buyers before your BFCM offers are locked in.

šŸŽ„ Ad of the Day

What Works:

Outcome Leads Fast - ā€œThicker, fuller hairā€ gives the ad an immediate end benefit, while the large type keeps message-market fit clear and easy to process in-feed.

Routine Feels Effortless - ā€œLess than 1 minute/dayā€ directly reduces perceived effort, making the treatment feel easy to adopt while the capsule-in-hand visual reinforces simplicity and daily habit formation.

Product Feels Credible - The clean clinical palette, visible jar and ingredient callouts like hair vitamins plus minoxidil create strong trust signals without making the creative feel overly medical.

Pair a high-value outcome with the smallest believable daily commitment. Reducing perceived effort can lower conversion friction as much as increasing the promised benefit.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit herešŸ¤

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🄰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🄳