Pinterest Adds AI Business Assistant to Ads Manager

Ahead of next week's Cannes Lions event, Pinterest has announced a series of new AI-powered products aimed at advertisers, agencies, and marketing technology partners.

The updates include a new AI assistant for advertisers, infrastructure that connects Pinterest data to AI-powered marketing tools, expanded AI creative capabilities, and an experimental shopping app called Ask Pinterest. According to Pinterest, these products are designed for a digital environment where discovery increasingly happens through conversational AI experiences.

Business Assistant brings AI into Pinterest Ads Manager

Pinterest is adding Business Assistant, an AI collaborator inside Ads Manager and on mobile. The tool surfaces trends and recommends which Pins advertisers should promote.

Business Assistant is built to combine an advertiser's business context with Pinterest's platform insights. Rather than returning walls of text, it presents breakout trends as graphs and shows the top Pins to promote.

Pinterest says that when searches for a term such as "clean beauty routine" climb in a given week, the assistant can show how interest grew and surface the Pins leading the trend. On mobile, it sends advertisers notifications about trends, performance, and optimization opportunities. Pinterest says the feature is currently in a closed beta in the U.S.

Pinterest MCP Connects Outside AI Tools

Pinterest introduced Pinterest  Model Context Protocol MCP). Pinterest lets third-party copilots and agentic tools connect to its advertising platform with secure access to campaign, analytics, and keyword insights.

The aim is to enable partner tools to give Pinterest-specific guidance without advertisers switching between systems. Pinterest says it is developing the protocol with alpha partners including PMG, Pacvue, Dentsu, Havas, Innovid by Mediaocean, and Omnicom's Jump450.

The approach mirrors a wider 2026 shift, after TikTok opened its ad platform to third-party AI agents and Meta released ad connectors for ChatGPT and Claude.

Pinterest Updates Performance+ Creative

Pinterest is also updating its Performance+ creative offering with a new AI model focused on creative selection. According to the company, the model evaluates multiple versions of an advertisement and determines which creative variation is most likely to perform for a specific impression. Instead of optimizing only at the ad level, the system evaluates individual creative assets and selects a variation in real time.

Brands will also get new ad review tools and enhanced creative reporting breakouts, which Pinterest claims give them more confidence in how creative appears and performs.

Ask Pinterest Tests Shopping Outside the App

Pinterest is rolling out Ask Pinterest in the U.S., a limited-access experimental app for testing conversational, visual-first, and agentic shopping experiences outside the main app. The app serves as a testing ground for new shopping experiences that may later appear in Pinterest's core platform.

It extends Pinterest's Taste Graph and visual discovery beyond the core app, using the company's signals around taste, intent, and preferences to power recommendations. The moves come as agentic AI reshapes digital advertising across major platforms.

What the Updates Mean for Advertisers

The announcements show Pinterest expanding AI across three areas at the same time: campaign management, creative optimization, and product discovery.

Business Assistant focuses on advertiser workflows inside Pinterest. MCP extends Pinterest data into external AI systems used by agencies and brands. Performance+ applies AI to creative selection and delivery. Ask Pinterest explores how conversational AI could influence future shopping behavior.

The company is positioning its platform data, trend signals, and shopping intent information as inputs for a growing ecosystem of AI-powered marketing tools and discovery experiences.