This Overlay Color Gives You 37% More Clicks on Pinterest [Case Study]

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There are many opinions on what colors work the best on Pinterest – whether it’s ranking colors for the specific keywords, or your own brand colors.

There is a general consensus, based on what Pinterest says, that warmer colors tend to work the best.

I wanted to know how much it matters – is there a huge difference in clicks and outbound clicks if the only thing you change is your overlay color?

It turns out, there is!

Read on to find out more.

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I ran this case study with a simple idea: some colors work better than others on Pinterest.

Let’s find out which ones they are!

I run paid ads with three different color variations, keeping all the other aspects of the content the same.

The colors were black, light orange and bright neon pink – I wanted to have two warm colors competing against each other, and then one with the highest amount of contrast – so black with white font.

Here is a snapshot of what the pins looked like, this is a mock-up with stock image and sample text, with the exact layout and colors I used. I did this test on the client’s account, which is in the travel niche.

Goal of the Case Study

As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to find out which colors perform the best and I measured it by looking at clicks and outbound clicks.

Why not click trough rate (CTR)?

In normal settings, your CTR would indicate how well your ad resonates with the audience, 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.

How I Set up This Case Study

I used paid Pinterest ads to determine which color delivers the most clicks.

To get accurate data for this case study, I had to make sure the following criteria were met:

  1. The pins were identical, with only the color being the one differentiating factor. To do this, I set up brand new pins as ‘ad pins only’ so they don’t get flagged up as spam in my account.
  2. 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.
  3. I had to manually monitor the ad group, to cut off each ad group when it reached the same amount of impressions, around 11,000. Why not more? It would cost significantly more money and I felt confident that 11k would give me enough data to work with.
  4. I used a manual campaign set up, using only keywords, not interests, for targetting to find the most relevant people for my content.

Case Study Results: the Winner

So, can you guess the winner?

If you thought the bright color works the best, you’re absolutely right!

The bright pink color delivered 35% more clicks compared to the worst ad, and 26% more clicks compared to the second spot ad.

Not only that, but it also generated 37% more outbound clicks compared to the worst-performing ad.

Here is the data for the campaign:

And here is the same in a table in case you can’t see it well:

CreativePin ClicksOutbound ClicksCTR
Bright Pink31330.26%
Orange23240.2%
Black20210.18%

What Did I Learn

It is perhaps not surprising that bright colors attract more attention and break up the standard toned-down colors on Pinterest.

Does this mean you should use bright pink in all your organic content from now on?

No, that’s not the lesson here.

Here are some implications of what I learned from this case study:

  • do not use dark (black) color tones in the image, as it’s unlikely it will do well. In most cases the contrast is too harsh and the creative doesn’t look good enough to attract clicks.
  • if you’re using an overlay with text, make sure there is enough contrast, which the bright color provided better compared to the light orange
  • Pinterest prefers certain types of color palettes and dominant color, and you should check this by reviewing the top pins for your keyword
  • If you see the top dominant color for your keyword is orange, you should experiment with designing some of your pins with brighter orange tones, to see if they deliver better results than your standard color tone
  • If you can get your content to rank at the top, the brighter color will make a massive difference to your engagement levels, and boost the pin rank even further

Drawbacks of This Case Study

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.

4. ‘Ranking Colors’ Theory

The pins that are ranking at the top of the results for a specific keyword have one dominant color that you can find in the source code.

Pinterest ranks content not just based on the data points visible, but also the quality of the visuals. As they say: ‘we employ a pre-trained image classifier to predict the top classes of visual content.’

Part of the game is therefore trying to make your content look similar to the top ranking content, so the classifier identifies your content as similar to the top-ranking content.

Now, if we apply what we learned from this test to organic content, I would say this: look at the dominant colors, but try to use brighter and lighter tones in your designs.

Want to Learn More?

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Author
Lucia is a senior marketing professional with over a decade of experience in digital marketing. She is dedicated to helping bloggers and business owners grow their revenue through strategic and data based marketing strategies. Her areas of expertise include SEO, Pinterest marketing, branding, social media marketing, and e-commerce.

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