Imagine having a megaphone that only reaches the ears of people who are interested in what you have to say. Sounds like a dream come true, right? Well, that’s exactly what social media advertising offers businesses!
With the help of advanced algorithms that analyze user behavior, social media platforms can help businesses connect with their ideal audience, resulting in a higher chance of conversion.
Facebook and Pinterest are the two popular social media platforms business owners use to run their advertising campaigns.
This post aims to discuss the difference between advertising on Facebook and Pinterest, and how the two platforms compare so that you will be able to decide on which to run your advertising program to achieve your marketing goals.
Choosing Between Pinterest and Facebook Ads for Your Campaign
| Facebook Ads | Pinterest Ads |
|---|---|
| Better customer reach due to a higher number of users. | A lower number of total active users and less reach. |
| A more diverse community of users. | A less diverse community of users – mostly female users. |
| Offers many tools to monitor ad performance | Harder to monitor ad performance. |
| Constant monitoring of ads required. | Less commitment is needed. |
| Strict and time-consuming approval process. | More flexible and faster approval process. |
| Cheaper CPA and CPC | Cheaper CPM |
| Higher conversion rates and ROI | Lower conversion rates and ROI |
| More competitive due to a higher number of advertisers. | Less competitive with a lower number of advertisers. |
| Not as good at brand engagement. | Better brand engagement. |
| Not as good at creating demand for particular brands. | Better at creating demand for particular brands. |
Let’s take a look at some of the aspects of advertising that one platform performs better in than the other.
⚡ Also Read: Facebook ads active but not spending
Potential Customer Reach
With nearly 2.89 billion monthly worldwide users, Facebook will allow you to reach a much bigger target audience if you choose to run your ad campaign on it, compared to Pinterest’s 450 million monthly users
Not only will you be able to reach the right target audience with Facebook ads, but also expand your reach to different audiences all over the world.
You also have the added advantage of creating advertisements from your Facebook ad account to appear on Instagram as well.
Diversity Of User Community
Facebook has a more diverse community of users worldwide in age, gender, occupation, ethnicity, religion, and interests.
Pinterest users tend to be predominantly female between the ages of 25-50 years with interest in fashion, home decor, and DIY.
Targeting Audience
Facebook Ads have the edge over Pinterest Ads with a wider target audience.
Facebook Ads, unlike Pinterest, allows a more granular level of targeting, based on demographics, interests and behaviors. Plus, the audience on Facebook is an almost equal mix of male and female users.
You can also target based on interests, keywords, and demographics on Pinterest, however, the majority of the audience is women, and Pinterest’s focus is on visual discovery.
Monitoring Ad Performance
Facebook provides you with better tools to see how well your advertisements are performing compared to Pinterest’s ad tools.
⚡ Also Read: Local Rate Limited Pinterest
Facebook ads manager, insights statistics, and pixels feature to allow you to monitor how the audience interacts with the ads, how much you spend and get in return, compare how organic posts and paid ads perform, and how many of the target audience turn into customers.
Commitment Needed
Both platforms require businesses to invest time and effort into creating and managing the ads, but Facebook ads need to be constantly monitored, compared to Pinterest.
If you don’t keep an eye on how your Facebook ads are doing regularly and continuously, your investment can go to waste.
Conversion Rates And ROI
Now for the most important part – CTR, Conversion rates, ROAS and ROI. Facebook ads are the clear winner for all of these.
| Average | Facebook ads | Pinterest Ads |
|---|---|---|
| Average CTR | 0.90% | 0.28% |
| Average Conversion Rate | 6.57% | 1.5% to 8.5% |
| Average ROAS | 10.68 | 2.7 |
| Average ROI | 200% | 100% |
It’s important to note that Pinterest ads have a 100% ROI while Facebook has an average ROI of around 200%, which is pretty impressive.
Duration of Impact
Out of the two social media platforms, Pinterest will continue to bring results from your ad campaigns for the longest time to come.
On Facebook, your advertisements will disappear from all placements the moment you finish your campaign. In other words, your ads will no longer be running once you stop paying for them.
Your ads on Pinterest, on the other hand, remain on your profile and can appear in the Pinterest feed even after your paid campaign is over.
Getting Approved
Getting an advertisement approved on Facebook is harder than On Pinterest.
Due to the strict policies of Facebook, some ads can get denied and it can take up to 24 hours for an ad to get approved.
Cost
Pinterest is cheaper when it comes to cost per 1000 ad impressions and it costs around $2 – $5 while Facebook CPMs are around $7.
But CPA and CPC costs can be cheaper on Facebook, being around $5 and $1 respectively. The CPA Pinterest is around $6 -$10 and the CPC can go as high as $1.50.
Competition
The competition is a lot lower on Pinterest.
It can be much harder for you to make your ads on Facebook stand out and get seen by your target audience due to the sheer number of businesses advertising on Facebook, which is over ten million active advertisers from all over the world as of 2023.
Generating Traffic
The unique design of Pinterest that links every image you place on a board to its primary source makes it possible to generate referral links more easily than any other social media platform.
So, you have a better chance of driving traffic to your website, landing page, or product page on Pinterest than on Facebook.
⚡ Also Read: Facebook Link Clicks Vs Landing Page Views
Brand Engagement
It’s a bit difficult to measure but a brand with a promoted pin campaign on Pinterest is likely to get more engagement as users on Pinterest tend to save pins for later use.
Bottom Line
All in all, both platforms are awesome. But only certain types of products or ads will do good on Pintrest. Remember its all about visuals and the majority of the users are female.
Facebook leads the competition in potential customer reach, better tools for monitoring, ad performance, and a more diverse community of users.
But Pinterest stands out with lower costs, and a more lax and faster approval process, benefiting advertisers even after the ends of their paid campaigns, demanding less commitment from the advertisers, less competition, being better at generating traffic and brand engagement and demand creation potentials.
So, you need to consider what type of product you are selling and if the audience will engage, and the budget to consider to decide which platform will suit your needs best.
