Pinterest as a Traffic Source

Pinterest is a platform that serves as a mixture of a social platform and search engine. It displays its users pieces of content that were created by other users, known as pins. From a business perspective, it allows advertisers to promote their pins that contain information about a product and a link. The following guide describes how to start a campaign in Pinterest and track it with Voluum.

Pinterest ad tracking works on similar principles to Google's. There are actually two ways to track traffic:

• Cross-domain tracking, where a visitor is directed to a destination URL, which can be either a campaign URL (for a redirect method) or a direct tracking URL (for a direct method).
• Parallel tracking, where a visitor is driven to a landing page without any redirects, and at the same time a request is being made to Voluum.

For the simplest and least problematic setup, we will create a standard redirect campaign and submit a campaign URL as the destination URL of the promoted pin. You can use the direct method of tracking with Pinterest as well.

Passing information about conversions from Voluum to Pinterest is supported and requires only a small alteration to the pixel redirect URL template.

You need to have the following things ready at your disposal before digging in the setup:

• An active Voluum account.
• An active Pinterest business account. You can upgrade your personal Pinterest account to a business one or create a brand new business account.
• An offer and, optionally, a lander.

Once you have everything ready, you can proceed with the guide.

The first thing you need to do is to create a campaign in Voluum. This will provide you with a campaign URL. To do so, perform the following steps:

1. Create an offer element. Read the Add an Offer to Voluum article to learn how to do that.
2. (Optionally) Create a lander element. Read the Add a Lander Element article to learn more.

3. Create a traffic source element. Voluum provides you with the Pinterest traffic source template, so you can use it and skip most of the manual setup. In order to use this template, perform the following steps:

   1. In Voluum, go to Traffic sources.

   2. Click the Create button and select the Traffic source option from the drop-down menu.

      

   3. Select the Pinterest template.
   4. Click the Load template button. The New traffic source form will appear.

   5. You can change or adjust any option in the New traffic source form. Once you have done so, click the Save button.

      

4. Create a campaign. 

   In Voluum, go to Campaigns, click the Create button and select the Campaign Simple or Campaign Advanced option from the drop-down menu.

   

   1. In the New campaign form, select the Pinterest traffic source that you have just created from the Traffic source drop-down menu.
   2. Provide a name for the campaign in the Campaign name text field.
   3. Select the cost model from the Cost model drop-down menu and provide a cost value in the Cost value text field.
   4. Select the Private Workspace that you want this campaign to be assigned to from the Workspace drop-down menu.
   5. (Optionally) Select a lander you have previously created from the Landers drop-down menu.
   6. Select the offer that you have just created from the Offers drop-down menu.

   7. Click the Save button.

      

   8. Click the Copy button next to the campaign URL to copy it to the clipboard and paste it into any text editing tool.

      

   9. Click the Done button.

The second thing you need to do is to create a campaign in Pinterest. Follow the steps below:

1. In Pinterest, click the Ads button and select the Create ad option from the drop-down menu.

   

2. Select a campaign objective from the Build awareness and Traffic consideration categories.
3. Provide a name for the campaign in the Campaign name text field.

4. Set other options, including the budget, and click the Continue button.

   

5. Set all the budget and targeting options and scroll to the bottom of the page to add a new pin.

   

6. In the pin creation form, upload your photo or a video.
7. Provide a description of your product.
8. Paste the campaign URL that you have copied from Voluum into the Destination URL text field.

9. Click the Publish button.

   

10. Select a board and click the Publish button.

    

11. You will go back to the ad setup. Select the pin that you have just created.

12. Click the Launch button.

    

13. Provide your payment details and click the Launch button.

This step is optional. You can pass information about conversions that Voluum has to Pinterest if you require. The traffic source template for Pinterest in Voluum already has a pixel redirect URL template. You need to update this template with Pinterest tag ID.

1. Create a tag in Pinterest and get the tag ID.

   

2. In Voluum, edit the Pinterest traffic source and take a look at the traffic source postback URL.

   

   Your pixel redirect URL should look like this: https://ct.pinterest.com/v3/?event=signup&tid=YOUR_TAG_ID&noscript=1

   You need to:

   • Replace the signup event code name with the name that you use on your web page. The list of event code examples can be found here: https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/event-code-examples
   • Replace the YOUR_TAG_ID phrase with the tag ID that you have obtained from Pinterest. Your altered pixel redirect URL should look like this: https://ct.pinterest.com/v3/?event=signup&tid=2613773302052&noscript=1

3. Click the Save button.

   

You have now successfully set up passing conversions to Pinterest.