Maplebear Inc., doing business as Instacart (Nasdaq: CART), and Pinterest, Inc. (NYSE: PINS) announced a landmark partnership on June 16, 2025, that will allow Pinterest ads to become directly shoppable through Instacart’s retail media infrastructure. The collaboration connects Pinterest’s visual discovery platform with Instacart’s first-party data from over 1,800 retail partners and aims to help advertisers reach high-intent consumers at the point of inspiration—transforming pin-based discovery into one-click fulfillment.
The announcement, made at Cannes Lions 2025, positions both Instacart and Pinterest at the intersection of social discovery and e-commerce, allowing brands to use precise retail data from Instacart to reach Pinterest users based on real-world grocery and product purchasing behavior. A second rollout phase will integrate closed-loop attribution to tie Pinterest ad engagement to measurable sales activity across Instacart’s expansive marketplace.
What new targeting and measurement capabilities will brands gain with Instacart’s data on Pinterest and how will these impact marketing ROI?
Brands advertising on Pinterest will now be able to tap into Instacart’s anonymized retail media segments, which are built using actual transactional data from grocery and household purchases. These segments include high-interest consumer profiles such as organic food buyers, clean beauty shoppers, and zero-sugar beverage consumers. Instead of relying solely on engagement metrics or inferred intent, marketers can now serve ads to Pinterest users backed by demonstrated purchase history.
As part of the phased integration, a closed-loop measurement system is also being developed. This capability will allow marketers to track whether a Pinterest ad leads to a confirmed sale on the Instacart platform, creating a feedback loop of impression-to-purchase analytics. That’s especially important in a digital ad market demanding precision attribution. Early test campaigns using Instacart’s RMN (retail media network) showed that advertisers experienced up to 93 percent uplift in new-to-brand sales when campaigns were optimized using Instacart’s shopper profiles and off-platform integrations.
This shift may have implications for Pinterest’s long-term ad monetization. Historically viewed as a top-of-funnel inspiration engine, Pinterest now has the tools to demonstrate mid- and bottom-funnel performance. Instacart’s attribution system could drive reallocation of media budgets from platforms like Meta or Google, especially among consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands looking for direct proof of return on ad spend (ROAS).
How will the shoppable experience work for consumers using Pinterest and Instacart and what user behaviours does it optimise?
From the user’s perspective, Pinterest’s content will now be directly actionable within Instacart’s fulfillment framework. If a user pins a recipe, party idea, or home decor tip, they will have the option to instantly purchase relevant items through Instacart in just a few clicks. This could include grocery ingredients, wellness products, or even household essentials—delivered as quickly as 30 minutes in select markets.
This tight integration between content and commerce reflects broader consumer behavior trends. Pinterest users increasingly engage with the platform to plan meals, curate seasonal decor, or organize events. The Instacart collaboration effectively reduces friction between seeing a product and buying it—capitalizing on impulse, immediacy, and contextual relevance.
Experts note that this experience aligns with a macro shift in digital consumer psychology: the merging of discovery, intent, and transaction into a single pathway. Rather than navigating away from Pinterest to search for and order a product, users can now complete the journey within the same inspiration session.
Why is retail media convergence between ecommerce platforms and social discovery exceeding expectations among advertisers?
The retail media boom, projected to exceed USD 100 billion globally by 2026, is being fueled by two major forces: the deprecation of third-party cookies and the escalating demand for measurable performance. In this context, the Pinterest–Instacart integration provides both high-quality first-party data and real-world sales attribution—two features increasingly valued by media buyers.
Instacart’s approach has been to position itself as a platform-agnostic RMN, offering advertisers access to retail data across multiple environments including connected TV, publisher sites, and social platforms. Prior to Pinterest, Instacart had already partnered with Roku, Google, and Meta to extend its data reach.
The Pinterest announcement builds on this trend, particularly by connecting discovery-driven platforms with real-world retail fulfillment. Analysts from research firms covering the adtech sector have described this approach as “the new frontier” in retail media, blending awareness and conversion in a single flow.
What do analysts and institutional investors say about Instacart and Pinterest in light of this partnership, and how does stock sentiment align?
Both Instacart and Pinterest saw modest declines in share price following the announcement, which some market watchers attributed to general tech-sector volatility rather than doubts about the partnership’s potential. Maplebear Inc. (CART) was trading around USD 43.37 in early Monday trading, while Pinterest, Inc. (PINS) hovered near USD 33.84. Analysts believe investor caution is tied more to the uncertain timeline for measurable revenue uplift than to the partnership’s fundamentals.
Institutional sentiment remains broadly optimistic. Advertising leaders like Procter & Gamble and Unilever have already expressed interest in higher-performance retail media networks that go beyond walled gardens like Amazon or Walmart. The Pinterest–Instacart pairing may offer a differentiated third option—especially attractive to brands prioritizing lifestyle alignment, inspiration-driven product discovery, and programmatic optimization.
Credit analysts have also highlighted Instacart’s long-term trajectory in the advertising space. With over 7,000 brand advertisers and 220+ grocery ecommerce integrations, Instacart has built one of the largest non-retailer-owned RMNs in North America.
What is the broader outlook for Instacart’s retail media business and Pinterest’s commerce ambitions beyond organic ad platforms?
Instacart’s strategy has increasingly moved beyond delivery logistics into data monetization and infrastructure play. Its retail media business is now considered a critical driver of its future growth, particularly as it competes with entrenched networks like Amazon DSP and Walmart Connect. The Pinterest integration marks a new level of off-platform diversification for Instacart, which could be followed by similar tie-ups with other discovery or video platforms.
Pinterest, meanwhile, is accelerating its transformation from an idea board to a commerce hub. In Q1 FY25, the American visual search platform reported USD 855 million in revenue and 570 million monthly active users—a 10 percent year-over-year growth in user base. Its AI-powered ad tools and push into product tagging, catalogs, and affiliate integrations underscore a pivot toward transactional use cases.
Going forward, analysts expect Pinterest to democratize access to Instacart-powered shoppable ad formats beyond early brand partners. Small and mid-sized businesses may eventually gain access through self-service ad portals or via integrations with demand-side platforms like The Trade Desk. If adopted at scale, this could significantly increase Pinterest’s revenue per user while embedding Instacart deeper into the digital advertising stack.
How might this new Instacart–Pinterest integration shift competitive dynamics across retail media networks and digital advertising?
The Pinterest–Instacart integration underscores how RMNs are moving upstream into creative and content-first environments. Traditional retail media has been built around product search and static ad slots. This model challenges that by integrating transactional capability into content-based inspiration—essentially collapsing the marketing funnel.
Should the model prove successful, it may pressure competitors to form similar alliances. TikTok’s efforts in live commerce and YouTube’s shoppable video experiments may intensify, while Meta could further integrate its Shops feature with delivery or retail data networks. Smaller platforms may face difficulty replicating the depth of Instacart’s infrastructure or the contextual richness of Pinterest’s content.
Ultimately, the integration may serve as a blueprint for the next evolution in retail media, where the value proposition is not just targeting and measurement—but a seamless, joyful experience for consumers and a verifiable return for brands.
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