The biggest shift I noticed was Pinterest's algorithm now heavily favors video pins, especially those under 15 seconds that show transformations or quick tutorials. My static pins got maybe half the engagement of similar video content. The sweet spot seems to be 8-12 second looping videos with text overlay explaining the 'how' or 'why'.
Pinterest's keyword targeting works completely differently than Google. It's not just about what people search for, but what they save. I had better results targeting competitor's saved pins than broad keywords. There's a hidden tool in the ads manager that shows you which specific pins your audience is saving from similar brands, goldmine for creative direction.
For budgets, I found starting with $15-20/day for the first week works better than going big immediately. The algo needs time to learn who engages, and smaller daily budgets let it optimize without burning cash. After 7 days, scale the winning ad sets by 20% daily if they maintain ROAS.
One weird hack that worked: Duplicating a converting campaign but changing ONLY the pin description (keeping same visuals). Got 30% more reach on the duplicate because Pinterest treated it as fresh content. Their content ID system seems to focus more on visuals than text.
