Even though it looks like this is an uncomfortable timing for Pinterest’s announcement, but it has today unveiled a new, ‘Dynamic Creative’ ad process which will enable advertisers to automate the ad creation and targeting process for their campaigns based on individual user behavior.

Pinterest’s Dynamic Creative Ad Process:

Pinterest’s Dynamic Creative ad process essentially responds to how users interact in the app – if a user is searching for ‘decorative lights’ for example, and they narrow their search for specific items, the system will then show ads for items from your uploaded catalog which best match the users’ stated interest.

In light of Pinterest’s Dynamic Creative ad process, Pinterest explains: “Advertisers can now generate multiple versions of new Pins from uploaded assets or a product feed where they can automatically import product data (price, location, availability, etc.). Parts of the Pins will dynamically display creative elements like product images, copy, pricing, etc. which will only be shown to the advertiser’s assigned audiences.”

That’ll effectively enable businesses to generate hundreds of ad variants automatically, besides unique messaging tailored to each audience segment.

“This not only reduces the time and effort required to make custom ads that are relevant to unique groups of consumers but helps advertisers test and identify which creative elements drive performance.”

Moreover, in light of Pinterest’s Dynamic Creative ad process, Pinterest is also partnering with RevJet, StitcherAds, besides Smartly.io in order to facilitate the new process, with these data-driven platforms providing the in-app tracking and systems to then create the ads based on automated insights. And that leads to the ‘uncomfortable’ element.

Surely, the ad process makes sense and will provide more extra ways to reach users based on their individual behaviors and interests. Anyhow, it could also be affected by Apple’s upcoming IDFA changes, which are expected to reduce data-tracking capacity within apps. And with some 85% of Pinterest’s 442 million users accessing the platform via the app, that could render this option significantly less beneficial – though, of course, not all of those users are on iOS.

However, the expectation is that many users will opt-out of such – and in case they do, that could lessen the data that powers this process. Pinterest would, however, still be able to use data-tracking from your own website, using the Pinterest Tag, then match that with individual user data for this targeting. Anyhow, that wouldn’t be as effective as utilizing the full capacity of IDFA tracking.

As noted this makes the timing of this announcement a little strange. But still, we don’t know what will happen with IDFA, and it could still be an effective, beneficial process for automating custom ad delivery on the platform.

Pinterest’s Dynamic Creative option is being made available via its partners from today.