Pinterest is setting up its base for Argentina, Chile and Colombia in Buenos Aires. For brands with an online store, the real news isn't advertising: it's that millions of people are searching for what to buy before they've picked a brand.
The company announced an initial investment with its own sales team in Buenos Aires, serving advertisers, agencies and creators across the three countries. It's the first time Pinterest has a local team dedicated to the region.
You may never run a campaign there. Even so, this affects your store. Here's why.
What Pinterest announced
- A local team: it starts with four people in Buenos Aires, who will also grow the business in Chile and Colombia.
- An audience that's already there: 13.1 million monthly unique visitors in Argentina, 33.9% of the country's online population. 57% of them are Gen Z.
- Regional and global scale: the three countries add up to more than 30 million monthly visitors. Worldwide, Pinterest reached 640 million monthly active users in the second quarter of 2026, up 11% year over year.
Marcos Westphalen, Pinterest's VP for Latin America, was clear about the goal: the priority today is to bring in more brands for the size of the audience the platform already has.
A search with no brand in mind
Pinterest doesn't work like other social networks. Many people arrive with an idea or a search: an outfit, a living room, a gift, a holiday table. They're not there to see what friends posted; they're there to decide what they like.
And they rarely search for a brand. According to Pinterest, more than 90% of searches don't include a brand name. It's the moment when the decision is still open.
For a store, that's an unusual opportunity. On a search engine, the well-known brand has the edge. On Pinterest, a smaller brand can win over someone who had never heard of it, by showing the right product at the right moment.
The Pin comes from your catalog
Both platforms already connect your store to Pinterest. Tiendanube has a free integration that syncs the catalog and tracks sales. Shopify has an official app that turns every product into a Pin with its photo, title, price, availability and a link to buy.
That has a consequence few brands look at: what people see on Pinterest is what's in your store. If the photos don't show the product well, the titles are generic, the variants are set up wrong or the stock is out of date, that's what shows up in front of millions of people.
On a platform where everything starts with the eye, the catalog stops being backstage and becomes the shop window.
The click ends in your store
Someone coming from Pinterest is coming from an image they liked. They expect to find that same thing, on their phone, with no friction. If the product page doesn't live up to the photo, or the checkout gets in the way, the inspiration cools off, and the next idea is one scroll away.
There's another question worth answering before adding a channel: will you know which sales came from it? Without well-connected tracking, Pinterest becomes one of those channels everyone talks about and no one really measures.
Questions worth asking
- If someone searched Pinterest for a product like yours, without naming a brand, what would they find from your store?
- Do your photos and product pages hold up side by side with other brands?
- Does your product page deliver, on mobile, what the image promised?
- Do you know how many visits and sales come from Pinterest today?
In short
Pinterest is coming to find more brands for an audience that's already there. Advertising on it will be an option for some. But the ad is only half of the sale: the other half is the store. And with Black Friday and the holidays on the horizon, many weeks of people looking for gift ideas are ahead.
At Innovate we follow these changes closely so our clients hear about them first, with context. A few weeks ago something similar happened with ChatGPT Ads arriving in Argentina. Want your store ready for Pinterest? Let's talk.
