Pinterest announces new ad deal with Google, reaches 498 mn monthly users

San Francisco: Photo-sharing social media platform Pinterest has announced its next third-party ad integration with Google, as it reached an all-time record of 498 million monthly active users globally.

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready said that the partnership will focus on monetising several of its “currently unmonetised international markets” by enabling ads to be served on Pinterest via Google's Ad Manager.

“We went live a couple of weeks ago, and this is starting to ramp. Third-party ad demand is scaling as we anticipated,” Ready said during the company’s Q4 earnings call.

Pinterest has approximately 80 per cent of its users outside the US, but only 20 per cent of its revenue.

“We're quite excited about the partnership with Google as particularly for those unmonetised markets. We think it can help us to accelerate the average revenue per user (ARPU) journey for those markets and bring more relevant content and actionable content to users in those markets,” said the CEO.

Google is the second third-party ad partner for Pinterest after Amazon signed a multi-year deal with the company last year.

“We're quite pleased with the way the Amazon partnership is progressing. And the Google partnership, with the focus on our unmonetised or undermonetised international markets, we think, will be quite additive as well,” said Ready.

Global MAUs hit another all-time record of 498 million, growing 11 per cent, accelerating from last quarter and growing sequentially in all of the geographic regions.

“Q4 revenue of $981 million grew 12 per cent, marking continued double-digit revenue growth in the second half of this year,” said the company.

“And while growing revenue and engagement, we continue to demonstrate operational efficiency and disciplined expense management, resulting in Q4 adjusted EBITDA of $365 million or a 37 per cent margin, up more than 1,400 basis points from last year,” Pinterest said.