Pinterest embeds platform data in AI-driven ad workflows ahead of Cannes Lions Festival
From agency infrastructure to experimental shopping, Pinterest’s Cannes Lions Festival announcements put its taste and intent signals to work across the full advertising stack.
Pinterest has announced four new AI tools for advertisers, timed to coincide with Cannes Lions Festival. The launches range from a protocol-level integration designed to put Pinterest’s data inside the tools agencies already use, to an experimental standalone shopping app. Underlying all four is a single ambition: to make Pinterest’s taste and intent signals available wherever advertising decisions are made, turning the platform into infrastructure other tools build on rather than a destination people visit.
Pinterest MCP opens platform data to partner tools
The most operationally significant of the four is Pinterest MCP, an implementation of the open Model Context Protocol standard that gives partner platforms standardised access to Pinterest’s campaign data, keyword insights, and analytics. That is the infrastructure move in its purest form: Pinterest’s signals made usable inside platforms it does not own.
Advertisers and agencies increasingly manage campaigns through AI-assisted tools and copilots. Pinterest MCP is designed to make Pinterest’s signals, particularly its intent and taste data, available within those environments without requiring teams to switch platforms or build bespoke integrations. The protocol provides access to trend data, campaign analytics, and keyword insights, connecting Pinterest’s proprietary audience signals to AI-driven workflows in partner tools.
Alpha partners include PMG, Pacvue, Innovid by Mediaocean, and Omnicom’s Jump 450. Their feedback has shaped the protocol’s development across reporting, campaign planning, analysis, and execution. The rollout is currently available to select partners globally, with broader access to follow.
“Pinterest MCP helps us integrate Pinterest directly into the workflows our teams are already building, making it easier to analyse performance, uncover insights and act on opportunities without switching tools,” .
“What makes Pinterest especially compelling is the strength of its intent signals. People come to Pinterest to plan what they want to do next, creating valuable context that helps marketers make smarter decisions.”
Chris Ivey, President of Jump 450/Omnicom Performance
Performance+ moves creative selection to the asset level
If MCP sends Pinterest’s signals outward, Performance+ turns them inward, applied to the platform’s own inventory. Pinterest is updating its Performance+ creative product with a new AI model that selects at the level of individual assets rather than ad units. The previous model committed to a single creative variant per ad. The updated version evaluates a wider pool of assets for each impression and identifies whichever variant is most likely to perform at that moment.
In testing, the approach increased click volume by 7.5% against the previous model. The update also includes new ad review tools, giving advertisers greater transparency into how their creative appears on the platform, alongside more granular creative reporting breakouts. Pinterest Performance+ creative is available globally.
Business Assistant makes trends visual
Where MCP and Performance+ work behind the scenes, the next tool puts the signals in front of advertisers directly, as finished guidance. Business Assistant, Pinterest’s AI collaborator inside Ads Manager, is currently in closed US beta. It draws on platform-level trend data and an advertiser’s own account performance to surface planning guidance and optimisation recommendations.
The visual format is a deliberate design decision. Rather than returning analysis in text, Business Assistant uses graphs to represent trend data and surfaces relevant Pins alongside performance information. Launch materials illustrate a spike in “clean beauty routine” searches rendered graphically, with the Pins driving that trend displayed alongside for creative reference.
A mobile version pushes proactive notifications on trend activity, performance changes, and optimisation opportunities. Pinterest has not given a timeline for wider rollout beyond the US beta.
Ask Pinterest tests the conversational layer
Ask Pinterest, the most experimental of the four, is a standalone US app that takes Pinterest’s Taste Graph into more conversational, multi-step discovery scenarios outside the main Pinterest experience. It pushes the signals furthest from home, testing whether they can anchor a product of their own.
The stated target is decisions that don’t resolve through a single search: furnishing a room over time, finding a genuinely personal gift, planning a dinner party within a budget. The app is designed to retain context across sessions, handling the kind of extended, open-ended research that structured keyword search handles poorly.
Pinterest is explicit that Ask Pinterest is a test environment. What it learns from user behaviour will feed back into AI-powered features in the main product rather than operate as a standalone business.
Where Pinterest positions itself
“The future of discovery won’t be driven by keywords alone. It will be shaped by context, taste, and trusted recommendations. Pinterest has a unique advantage because people come to our platform to plan, curate and take action on what they want to do next. We’re building AI experiences and infrastructure that tap into those signals in more useful and relevant ways.”
Lee Brown, Pinterest’s Chief Business Officer
Across the four launches, Pinterest is claiming different parts of the advertising stack. MCP addresses agency and partner workflow integration. Performance+ targets creative efficiency at scale. Business Assistant handles campaign planning and trend monitoring within Ads Manager. Ask Pinterest is a longer-term test of whether a taste-signal platform can extend meaningfully into standalone agentic commerce.
Pinterest’s differentiation will be tested as Google, Meta, and the frontier model providers build their own discovery and recommendation infrastructure at scale. Its signals are genuinely distinctive, but whether advertisers conclude they are complementary to what the major platforms offer, or ultimately substitutable by it, is a question these launches do not answer.
Pinterest will be back at the Pinterest Manifestival at Carlton Beach Club at Cannes Lions 2026. RSVP to attend at PinterestCannes.com.