Welcome to another case study where I wanted to find out what type of pin layout delivers the highest amount of pin clicks and outbound clicks.
I focused on clicks specifically, not click through rate, because it’s a flawed metric in Pinterest (will explain reasons further down the article).
In this case study, I have tested the following layouts:
- Text overlay at the top part of the pin image, with a single image background
- Text overlay at the bottom part of the image, with a single image background
- Text overlay at the top part of the pin image, with 4 images as background
Can you guess which one did the best in terms of outbound clicks?
Keep your winner in mind and read on!
Goal of the Case Study
The goal was to figure out the best layout for pins with overlay, which deliver the highest amount of clicks and outbound clicks.
As I mentioned earlier, normally the main metric you would use in these types of studies is CTR (click through rate).
In normal settings, your CTR would indicate how well your ad resonates with people who saw your ad, with the highest CTR indicating the biggest potential traffic gains and cheaper clicks.
Unfortunately, this metric is completely useless on Pinterest.
CTR calculated on Pinterest is based on the number of pin clicks, and the number of impressions. Impressions are defined as a single pixel of the pin being displayed for at least one second.
Do you see the problem here?
Nobody has to really see your pin, yet Pinterest is using that as the basis of calculating your CTR.
So instead of CTR, we are focusing on pin clicks and outbound clicks.
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How I Set up This Case Study
I used paid Pinterest ads to determine which layout delivers the most clicks. That’s because you can’t A/B test using organic content, it would be completely impossible.
Here is how I set up the study and controlled the variables. Please also read the notes on limitations for testing with Pinterest at the end of the article – it’s not perfect, but this is as close as you can get to getting some data-backed strategies.
Here is the set up:
The pins were identical, with the only differentiating factor being the layout, they used the same background image, same topic and same font. Also the pin titles and descriptions were identical, all linking to the same page.
I created the pins as ‘ad only’ pins, otherwise they would be flagged up as spammy content on the account if I would have left them as organic content.
I did this test in a travel niche, on a client’s account.
All three pins were in the same campaign, separated into different ad groups to ensure each of these pins gets their own share of impressions. If I would put all pins into one ad group, they would compete against each other and the one that would get traction the fastest would then be pushed more in front of users.
I had to manually monitor the ad group, to cut off each ad group when it reached the same amount of impressions, around 10,000. Why not more? It would cost significantly more money and I felt confident that 10k would give me enough data to work with.
I used a manual campaign set up, using only keywords, not interests, for targetting to find the most relevant people for my content. The ads were only shown in search results, making sure I get data from audience relevant to my content.
Case Study Results
So did you guess the right winner?
If you thought the top overlay with single image is the best one, you’re spot on!

The difference between the winner and the worst layout was actually quite big. The winner received 45% clicks compared to the worst ad in the campaign.
Here is the data from Pinterest analytics if you can’t read the graphic too well:
Layout Style | Pin Clicks | Outbound Clicks | CTR |
Top Overlay | 31 | 31 | 0.31% |
Bottom Overlay | 22 | 24 | 0.21% |
Top with Grid | 13 | 14 | 0.13% |
What Did I Learn?
At first, I was surprised that the one-image layout performed better than the grid with more images.
I simply presumed that the 4 or 2 image grid with overlay has to be the best-performing pinterest layout as that’s mostly what I see when searching for keywords in this specific niche.
This just shows you that most people just blindly replicate what’s already on Pinterest without testing, and using common sense.
Here are a few reasons why I think the one image background worked better than multi-image option:
- for a Pinterest user on a mobile, it’s much easier to see what’s actually in the image and decide whether it matches their search or not
- Pinterest algorithm uses visual recognition thanks to which it can detect objects in image. Because of this, it might get conflicting signals for what the pin is about, if it detects multiple objects in the image that might not be related to the keyword
- overlay at the top of the pin image makes sense if you’re scrolling on your mobile, the bright color of the overlay will come to your vision field much faster than if you would include it in the middle or bottom
- the last reason may be that it’s harder to make multi image grid look good – I usually tend to pick out the overlay color from the photo used in the pin design, and if you have two or four images the color of the overlay may clash with some of them. So using just one image may produce aesthetically more pleasing graphics.
Takeaways From This Case Study
Even if you see that the top ranking pins for your keywords are multi image designs, it’s a good idea to add some pin designs using a single image background, to see how they perform.
Always add your overlay at the top of the image so the user can see it faster when they’re scrolling. Not just that, make sure it’s tightly related to what they’re searching for.
Drawbacks of This Case Study
In this section, I wanted to summarize the downfalls of testing with Pinterest, for complete transparency.
If you’ve already read the previous case studies, you can skip this section as it’s identical for all the case studies.
The Pinterest platform has unique drawbacks that do not allow you to run standard scientific tests because you have no control over many variables, and also because of the unique way they count impressions.
I did the best I could to get results that will make a difference, however, these are the things that present challenges to these results:
1. Impressions Quality
Technically, all impressions should have the same weight in determining the results, but this is not the case on Pinterest.
An impression doesn’t mean that the content was seen by anyone. Impressions are defined as at least one pixel of your pin being loaded for at least one continuous second.
So we can speculate, that some pins get a larger share of these bad quality impressions, when only a tiny fraction of the frame is visible, while others get better impressions and people actually get a chance to see the full pin.
2. Organic Results vs Paid Results
When you promote a pin or pay for a Pinterest ad, you can choose to have it displayed in search results for a specific keyword.
That means that the pin image will be in the top rows together with highest highest-performing organic content.
Now, if we take the lessons from this case study and apply them to organic content, we might find that it doesn’t work as well for one reason – this method assumes that you can get your content ranking at the top of the search results, and when you do that, that’s when the color of your image overlay matters.
Otherwise, if your pin doesn’t rank, nobody will see your content.
3. Sample Size Issue
For a standard test, you would calculate the appropriate sample size (audience size) for your ad so you can get a good estimate of how accurate your results are, with 95% confidence being the standard for verifying results.
Due to the limitations of the platform I mentioned earlier, and also the fact that I didn’t want to burn hundreds of euros testing this, I kept the size to 10k impressions for each ad, which I think is a good baseline.
I am planning to run more tests, and rather stretch the budget across several tests instead of testing a single variable.
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