Pinterest interview: driving a full funnel affiliate marketing strategy in 2026

At a time when Pinterest claims more than 50% of users come specifically to shop, the platform is establishing itself as an essential full-funnel player for brands and creators. Johan Gipch, Head of Content & Partnerships EMEA, shares his vision on affiliate marketing, ai, and the trends shaping 2026.

Pinterest is often perceived as an inspiration platform. How is this mission evolving in 2026, in a world where users look for immediately actionable ideas?

Over the past few years, Pinterest has transitioned from an upper-funnel inspiration platform to a benchmark, ai-powered full-funnel platform for visual search and discovery. In 2026, we will continue to scale our ai-driven personal shopping assistant capabilities, designed to help users make safer and more informed purchasing decisions.

More than 50% of our users visit to shop(1), and 96% of searches on Pinterest do not specifically include a brand name, representing a key opportunity for discovering new labels. When users search, save, and buy on Pinterest, we gather direct and strong intent signals. Our users’ 80 billion monthly queries, spread across 15 billion Boards(2), feed our highly valuable taste-graph, which forms the backbone of our ai.

As a result, our ai is 30% more likely to identify relevant content than leading off-the-shelf models, and over 90% of Pinterest users state they find products that match their needs. This is how we transform inspiration into action. This year, we continue to make discovery more actionable across the entire Pinterest experience through new full-funnel ad formats, even more personalized recommendations thanks to ai, and pathways that smoothly bridge discovery, consideration, and purchase.

With innovations like Pinterest Assistant, a vocal and visual personal shopping assistant powered by ai currently in limited testing in the US, we are turning search into a more human and intuitive journey of discovery.

What major consumer or content creation trends do you see emerging on Pinterest for 2026?

Two major shifts stand out. The first is the rise of the “remix”: people no longer just copy trends, they reinterpret them. We observe this particularly among Gen Z, our fastest-growing audience, which now accounts for half of our user base worldwide. They take cultural cues and aesthetics and transform them into something personal via Boards, Collages, and wishlists.

The second is a powerful movement toward non-conformity, seeking balance, and escapism in how users plan their future on Pinterest. Boards allow them to organize their ideas and return to them over time, which brings forward more sustainable trends. This long-term planning mindset is precisely what fuels our annual Pinterest Predicts™ 2026 report, where we identified 21 not-yet-mainstream trends, many of which are driven by Gen Z and that we believe will shape culture and content creation as a whole in 2026.

Taken together, these changes outline a creator economy in 2026 where success on Pinterest relies less on chasing fleeting virality and more on the ability to help people plan, protect their energy, and escape through content they can return to over time, building the life they want. In a creator economy battling an “authenticity deficit,” we believe the creators who stand out will be those who behave less like billboards and more like cultural translators and community builders, earning trust through true expertise and lived experience.

Affiliate marketing is integrating more and more naturally on Pinterest. How does the platform support this evolution between inspiration and conversion?

Affiliate campaigns fit naturally on Pinterest because our platform is engineered for visual search, product discovery, and shopping preparation. We help products become more discoverable at the heart of inspirational content through product tagging and interactive formats like Collages. This allows creators to share unique, personal, and authentic shopping recommendations while monetizing their content. The goal is to reduce friction: keeping inspiration at the heart of the experience while making the transition from inspiration to action simple and clear for users. This ecosystem sets the perfect playground for full funnel affiliate marketing.

How can brands and creators leverage Pinterest to drive performance without losing message authenticity?

The content that performs best is that which stays true to the creator’s voice and brings real added value: an idea, a tutorial, a before-and-after, a routine, or an editorialized selection. For brands, the challenge is to present themselves in a useful and inspiring way rather than pushing a traditional advertising message. When a creator recommends products they actually use and appreciate, using a native platform format (boards, interactive formats, collages), the experience remains authentic, and performance follows naturally.

The “Pinterest Creator Challenge” is a perfect illustration: through this solution, a brand can activate a carefully selected community of creators to interpret its vision authentically and produce original, diverse content at scale on Pinterest. The result: hundreds of creations driving organic engagement, while the top performers can be amplified via paid campaigns, transforming creator passion into brand performance. This serves as a powerful lever for advertisers looking to optimize their full funnel affiliate marketing returns.

What technical innovations (ai, shoppable content, smart tracking…) will transform how the value of inspiration is measured on Pinterest?

Two technological developments are changing the way we measure the value of inspiration on Pinterest.

First, multimodal ai applied to search and recommendations (powered by our taste-graph) transforms visual discovery into clearer, measurable intent signals by understanding what people look at, save, and organize through images, text, and now voice. Second, generative ai-driven experiences, like suggestions within Collages and Board enhancements, create cleaner consideration and decision signals: users are no longer just browsing ideas; they are actively assembling, refining, and purchasing their own style. Together, these innovations make it easier to measure not just last-click performance, but the true downstream business impact of inspiration early in the customer journey.

For advertisers, we believe the greatest advancements will come from combining first-party signals, advanced ai models, and tighter integration between inspiration and commerce. Our measurement tools, including our Conversions API and clean room environments, help advertisers better understand the incremental and downstream impact of inspiration, even when the conversion occurs later or off-platform. Ai allows us to analyze engagement signals such as saves, searches, and interactions with shoppable content to model how inspiration translates into intent over time. By supporting third-party measurement partners and broader ecosystem integrations, we enable advertisers to validate the impact of Pinterest, both in isolation and within a cross-channel view.

Which sectors or creator typologies are currently leveraging Pinterest’s affiliate potential best?

Pinterest is a platform of choice for projects, used by consumers with true intent, meaning that affiliate potential exists across all verticals—essentially wherever creators help people turn an idea into reality. In practice, we observe particularly strong momentum in categories where planning and product selection are central actions, such as home & decor, fashion, beauty, food, and parenting. The creators who perform best are generally those who combine a clear aesthetic, practical and useful recommendations, and strong curation, mirroring how users save and plan on Pinterest.

For instance, a food creator can build a series of Boards around specific moments and needs like “5-ingredient weekday dinners,” “high-protein lunch prep,” or “hosting a dinner party.” By tagging the right products (kitchen utensils, pantry staples, culinary gadgets, hosting essentials) directly within this inspirational content, the creator enables users to easily move from “I want to cook this” to “I have everything I need to prepare it,” all while keeping recommendations authentic and aligned with their expertise.

If you had to summarize Pinterest in 2026 in a single sentence?

Pinterest is the ai-powered visual search and discovery platform where everyone finds inspiration, organizes their ideas, and shops, all within a positive online environment.

Sources

(1) Pinterest internal data, Global, June 2023 | Result of an in-app survey

(2) Pinterest internal data, Global, Q3 2025