Programmatic deals just gained one of the biggest new sellers of the year. On October 26, 2026, Pinterest announced general availability of Programmatic Deals in select markets across North America, South America and Asia Pacific, letting enterprise advertisers buy selected Pinterest display and video inventory through the SSPs and DSPs they already use. For independent publishers, that is both new competition for deal budgets and a useful lesson in how the biggest sellers now package inventory.
This guide breaks down what Pinterest launched, the numbers it shared and how to read them, how deals work under the hood in OpenRTB, why the plumbing is getting easier and seven proven steps for packaging your own deals so buyers choose them.
Table of Contents
What Pinterest Launched
Pinterest describes the launch as its next phase of programmatic. According to the Pinterest newsroom announcement, Programmatic Deals let advertisers buy selected Pinterest display and video inventory alongside the rest of their campaigns, inside the planning, buying and measurement workflows enterprise marketers already run.
The partner list tells you how the deals are wired. Magnite is the primary supply side partner, providing the technology that connects Pinterest's inventory and audience signals to buying platforms. In Latin America and Asia Pacific, Pinterest also works with Google Ad Manager on the supply side.
On the buy side, Pinterest says its inventory can be purchased through Amazon Ads DVA+, Google Display and Video 360, Yahoo DSP and DeepIntent. Amazon Ads builds on a previously announced partnership with Pinterest to bring third party ad demand to the platform. Adweek reported that buyers can transact through private marketplaces and preferred deals in those DSPs.
Jason Fairchild, who leads programmatic and affiliate at Pinterest and is also chief executive of tvScientific by Pinterest, explained the motive to MediaPost. He said there is a meaningful shift toward programmatic buying, and that Pinterest wants to broaden its sources of demand while making it easier to buy its inventory, complementing its first party ads business.
That last phrase is the key to the strategy. Pinterest is not abandoning its own ad tools. It is adding programmatic deals as a second door for budgets that are planned and bought in DSPs, the same budgets many publishers rely on.
The Numbers Pinterest Shared
Pinterest backed the launch with figures about its scale and intent. It says it reached a record 640 million monthly active users, that more than 80 billion searches happen on the platform each month, that more than half of those searches are commercial and that more than 96% of text searches are unbranded.
The unbranded search figure is the one to notice. It is Pinterest's way of telling buyers that its audience arrives before a brand decision is made. That is exactly the pitch many content publishers make for their own inventory, and it is now being made by a platform with far larger scale.
Pinterest also shared one case study. In a June 2026 campaign, Moroccanoil used a programmatic deal enabled by Magnite and bought via Amazon Ads to add Pinterest to an existing campaign spanning premium video and display placements. Pinterest says the campaign delivered 15% incremental reach with only 1% audience overlap.
According to the same release, the campaign also delivered 63% more new to brand buyers among users whose purchase paths included Pinterest, and a 20% higher click through rate than the brand's average video and display campaigns. These are figures reported by Pinterest for a single advertiser, so treat them as a sales story rather than a benchmark.
Even as a single example, the case study is useful because it shows which metrics a large seller chose to lead with. It did not lead with CPM. It led with incremental reach, overlap, new customers and engagement. That is a strong hint about what deal buyers want to see from every seller.
Why This Matters for Independent Publishers
When a large platform opens its inventory through programmatic deals, it competes for some of the same planned budgets that flow to publisher deals. A buyer with a fixed lifestyle budget in DV360 or Amazon DSP now has one more premium line item to consider, and it comes with a polished case study.
There is also an upside. Sean Buckley, president of revenue and market strategy at Magnite, said that beyond connecting DSPs to Pinterest's own inventory, Magnite can help extend the value of Pinterest's intent signals across the open web, combining them with its demand relationships and omnichannel publisher footprint. If that happens, buyers could carry Pinterest informed plans onto publisher inventory sold through the same SSP.
The bigger lesson is about packaging. Buyers are getting used to sellers who arrive with a clear audience story, named DSP routes and outcome metrics. Publishers who still sell deals as a list of ad units and a floor price will look thin next to that. The good news is that every piece of the better pitch is within reach for a mid sized site.
If you are still deciding how much inventory to hold back from the open auction, our comparison of programmatic direct vs open auction lays out the trade offs before you go deeper into deal design.
Programmatic Deals Explained: How Deals Work in OpenRTB
Under the marketing labels, programmatic deals are a small set of fields in the bid request. In the IAB Tech Lab's OpenRTB 2.6 specification, the Pmp object is the private marketplace container for direct deals between buyers and sellers, and each deal is described by its own Deal object with a unique ID.
A few of those fields do most of the work. The private auction flag decides whether only the named deals may bid or whether open bids are also accepted. The bid floor sets the minimum CPM. An auction type value of 3 means the floor is the agreed deal price, which is how a fixed price deal is expressed.
Two more fields control who can buy. The allowed seats list restricts the deal to particular buyers, such as an agency or advertiser, and the allowed advertiser domains list restricts it to named brands. Finally, a guaranteed flag marks a deal as guaranteed, which means the bidder must bid on it.
| Deal type | How it is usually set up | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Private marketplace | Private auction among invited seats, with a floor | Premium inventory with competitive pricing |
| Preferred deal | Fixed price offered to a buyer before the open auction | A buyer who wants first look at set terms |
| Programmatic guaranteed | Fixed price with the guaranteed flag set | Reserved campaigns bought through a DSP |
| Curated deal | A package assembled by a curator across sellers | Audience or context packages at scale |
Our guide to private ad exchanges covers the private marketplace model in more detail, including how to choose which buyers to invite.
The Plumbing Is Getting Easier
Anyone who has set up deals knows the pain is often operational rather than strategic. Deal IDs get typed into one system and copied into another, terms drift and nobody notices until a campaign underdelivers. The IAB Tech Lab built a standard to reduce that friction.
The IAB Tech Lab Deals API version 1.0 was finalized on February 6, 2026, after a public comment period that ran until January 31. It lets the system where a deal is created, for example an SSP, push the deal terms into the receiving system, such as a DSP, and then query the status of that deal after it is sent.
The Tech Lab is clear about the limits. The Deals API is separate from OpenRTB and does not carry real time bid request information. Version 1 does not support proposals, revisions, negotiations or discoverability in deal marketplaces, though future versions may. It does add visibility into curated deals by describing which parties were involved in curating and selling a package.
The time savings can be significant. On its standard page, the Tech Lab quotes Jochen Schlosser, CTO and CPO at Adform, speaking to ExchangeWire: a custom deal sync integration with an SSP might cost 250 to 350 days of work, while doing it with the new standard costs about 50 days.
For a publisher, the practical takeaway is simple. Ask your SSP whether it supports the Deals API with the DSPs your buyers use. Fewer manual steps mean fewer deals that are set up wrong, and fewer weeks lost before money starts to flow.
Agents Are Entering the Deal Desk
One more detail in the Pinterest announcement points to where deal making is heading. Pinterest says its inventory is also part of Magnite Orchestration, a coordination layer that connects buyer and seller agents in a shared environment so they can discover, evaluate, package, activate and optimize premium inventory.
Marketing Dive reported that Magnite introduced Orchestration in June as an artificial intelligence driven layer that lets media buyers connect their AI agents to Magnite's seller agent. In other words, some programmatic deals may soon be scoped and assembled by software acting for buyers and sellers, not only by people trading emails.
That raises the bar on how well your inventory is described. An agent can only package what it can read. Clear deal names, consistent audience and context definitions and accurate terms in your SSP will matter more as these tools spread.
7 Proven Steps to Package Your Deals
You do not need Pinterest's scale to sell programmatic deals well. You need clear packages, clean setup and reporting that speaks the buyer's language. These seven steps follow the same logic the big sellers use.
1. Start with an audience or context story
Pinterest led with intent: unbranded searches made before a purchase. Find your equivalent. It might be readers researching a purchase, a loyal subscriber base or a tightly defined topic. Build each deal around one clear story a planner can repeat to a client.
2. Match the deal type to the buyer's goal
Use a private marketplace when you want competition among invited buyers, a preferred deal when one buyer wants first look at fixed terms and programmatic guaranteed when a campaign needs reserved delivery. Do not offer every type for every package.
3. Set floors and prices deliberately
In OpenRTB, an auction type of 3 makes the floor the agreed price. Decide which deals are fixed price and which are auctions, and review floors against what the same inventory earns in the open auction so a deal never undercuts it by accident.
4. Restrict seats and domains where it adds value
The allowed seats and advertiser domain fields let you tailor a deal to a specific agency or brand. Use them for genuinely bespoke packages, and keep broader deals open to all invited buyers so they can scale.
5. Automate deal setup
Ask your SSP whether it supports the IAB Tech Lab Deals API with your main DSPs. Where it does, use it. Where it does not, keep a single source of truth for deal IDs and terms, and check each new deal in the DSP before the campaign starts.
6. Watch deal health every week
Track bid requests, bids, win rate and spend for every deal ID. A deal that receives requests but no bids usually has a setup or pricing problem. A deal that wins but barely spends may be too narrow. Fix both before the buyer notices.
7. Report outcomes, not only impressions
Pinterest chose incremental reach, audience overlap, new to brand buyers and click through rate for its case study. Ask buyers which outcome they care about, then report on it with your own data. Never quote numbers you have not measured.
Risks and Limits to Keep in Mind
A few cautions keep this in perspective. Pinterest's case study is a single campaign reported by the seller, not an independent benchmark, and it says nothing about results for other categories or other sellers. Use it to learn which metrics buyers respond to, not to set expectations.
Geography also matters. Pinterest's launch covers North America, South America and Asia Pacific, with Google Ad Manager on the supply side in Latin America and Asia Pacific. Publishers in other regions will see less direct competition from this launch for now.
Finally, every intermediary in a deal takes a share. Curated deals in particular can add layers between the buyer and you. Our breakdown of programmatic ad fees shows where money goes along the chain, and is worth reading before you agree to any new deal path.
The bottom line is that programmatic deals are becoming the default way premium inventory is sold, even by the largest platforms. Publishers who package their audiences clearly, automate setup and report on outcomes will be the ones buyers keep choosing.