Don’t Sabotage Your Reports: Avoid Costly Setup Mistakes When Importing Pinterest Ads Data into Google Analytics!

You can now pull Pinterest cost, click, and impression data directly into Google Analytics via Pinterest Ads Data Import. This allows marketers to gain deeper insights into their advertising performance. This new feature simplifies the analysis of campaign effectiveness. It allows businesses to assess the return on investment (ROI) of their Pinterest ads more accurately. By integrating Pinterest data into Google Analytics, users can better understand audience engagement. They can adjust their marketing strategies suitably. This approach leads to more effective campaigns. It also improves performance measurement across digital platforms.

Why you should care. Bringing Pinterest Ads data into Analytics gives advertisers a unified view of performance across channels. This enables them to make more informed decisions. These decisions positively impact their overall marketing strategies. Nevertheless, mismanaging these imports can lead to duplicate or inaccurate reporting. This results in misleading insights. These misleading insights compromise the effectiveness of campaigns. Advertisers must handle the data integration process with precision. This affects reporting accuracy. It also influences budgeting, audience targeting, and future campaign planning. Hence, understanding the intricacies of data imports is essential for maximizing the benefits of advertising efforts across platforms.

How it works. When you set up a Pinterest Ads Data Import, Google Analytics tries to access historical campaign data. It attempts to pull up to 24 months. If the Pinterest API doesn’t support that full range, Analytics will extract as much as possible.

• If you have previously uploaded Pinterest cost data manually, you’ll need to delete those datasets first. Otherwise, you risk double-counting spend. Analytics won’t deduplicate the two sources.

Setup checklist:

• Create both a Pinterest business and ad account.
• Have at least Editor-level access in your Google Analytics property.
• Ensure your Pinterest ad URLs include:
  • utm_source (required)
  • utm_medium (required)
  • utm_campaign (optional, recommended)
  • utm_id (optional, recommended)
• Make sure all paid Pinterest traffic uses consistent utm_source and utm_medium values (e.g., utm_source=Pinterest, utm_medium=paid).

Import process:

• Create a new data source → Admin > Data import > Cost data > Pinterest.
• Connect Pinterest → Sign in with Pinterest Ads credentials.
• Configure data → Select the ad account and align source/medium values with your UTMs.
• Review & import → Confirm fields, filters, and schedule. Imports complete in ~30 minutes, with data available in up to 24 hours.

Important caveats. Once created, connectors can’t be edited. To change ad account, source, or medium, you’ll need to delete and recreate the connector.

• Imported data will automatically map fields, but review carefully before finalizing.

The help doc. Import cost data from Pinterest Ads