Pinterest has launched its groundbreaking Where-to-Buy links feature for all U.S. advertisers, delivering 19% higher user engagement compared to external landing page campaigns while providing CPG brands unprecedented access to transparent purchase intent signals. The innovation integrates seamlessly with MikMak’s technology to connect advertisers with over 8,000 retailers and 3 million store locations, transforming Pinterest from inspiration platform to complete purchase funnel solution with real-time measurement capabilities.
The Where-to-Buy links address a fundamental challenge in social commerce: bridging the gap between inspiration and action while maintaining measurement visibility throughout the customer journey. Unlike traditional external redirects that lose tracking data, Pinterest’s native integration provides brands comprehensive insights into user behavior from initial pin engagement through final purchase completion, enabling sophisticated attribution modeling and campaign optimization strategies.
Enhanced Retail Partnership Ecosystem
Brands with existing MikMak relationships can immediately leverage the enhanced Where-to-Buy functionality, while others can utilize Pinterest’s native, no-fee Pear Commerce option to integrate seamlessly with retail partners. This dual-path approach ensures accessibility across different business sizes and technical capabilities, democratizing advanced social commerce tools that previously required extensive technical infrastructure and partnership negotiations.
The integration builds on Pinterest’s broader commerce strategy, including May 2025’s visual search tools for women’s fashion across the U.S., Canada, and UK markets, with expansion plans for additional categories and geographic regions. June 2025’s Instacart collaboration enables brands to enhance campaigns by targeting high-intent audiences based on actual shopping behavior data, creating sophisticated behavioral targeting capabilities that compete with traditional e-commerce platforms.
Purchase Intent Data Revolution
Julie Towns, VP for Product Marketing and Operations at Pinterest, emphasized that Where-to-Buy links deliver “the best of both worlds: a seamless shopping experience for consumers and richer, more transparent purchase intent signals for brands”. This transparency addresses long-standing attribution challenges in social media advertising, where conversion tracking often breaks at platform boundaries, leaving marketers uncertain about actual return on investment and customer journey effectiveness.
The purchase intent data enables sophisticated audience segmentation and retargeting strategies, allowing brands to identify users at different funnel stages and customize messaging accordingly. Early testing demonstrates that integrated where-to-buy experiences consistently outperform external landing pages, suggesting that reduced friction and maintained context significantly improve conversion likelihood across diverse product categories and price points.
Strategic Market Positioning
Pinterest’s commerce evolution positions the platform as a comprehensive alternative to traditional e-commerce advertising channels, particularly valuable for CPG brands seeking to connect product inspiration with immediate purchase opportunities. The 537 million monthly active users represent a shopping-ready audience actively seeking product recommendations and purchase guidance, making Pinterest’s commerce tools particularly relevant for brands targeting discovery-driven purchase behavior.
The Where-to-Buy links launch coincides with Pinterest’s broader advertising expansion, including enhanced business management tools and AI-powered campaign optimization features that collectively transform the platform from creative inspiration hub to complete performance marketing solution. For CPG advertisers, this evolution provides new opportunities to capture consumers at the critical moment when inspiration converts to purchase intent, with measurement capabilities that justify continued investment and strategic expansion
https://neilpatel.com/blog/ultimate-pinterest-marketing-guide/